MRS. FARRANT. Poor thing!

AMY O'CONNELL. The moon's good for it.

LUCY DAVENPORT. Shall you come, Aunt Julia?

MRS. FARRANT. [_In flat protest._] No, I will not sit up while you play billiards.

MRS. O'CONNELL _goes out through the one window, stands for a moment, wistfully romantic, gazing at the moon, then disappears_. FARRANT _and_ WALTER KENT _are standing at the other, looking across the lawn_.

FARRANT. Horsham still arguing with Maconochie. They're got to Botany now.

WALTER KENT. Demonstrating something with a . . what's that thing?

WALTER _goes out_.

FARRANT. [_With a throw of his head towards the distant_ HORSHAM.] He was so bored with our politics . . having to give his opinion too. We could just hear your piano.

_And he follows_ WALTER.

MRS. FARRANT. Take Amy O'Connell that lace thing, will you, Lucy?

LUCY DAVENPORT. [_Her tone expressing quite wonderfully her sentiments towards the owner._] Don't you think she'd sooner catch cold?

_She catches it up and follows the two men; then after looking round impatiently, swings off in the direction_ MRS. O'CONNELL _took. The three women now left together are at their ease._

FRANCES TREBELL. Did you expect Mr. Blackborough to get on well with Henry?

MRS. FARRANT. He has become a millionaire by appreciating clever men when he met them.

LADY DAVENPORT. Yes, Julia, but his political conscience is comparatively new-born.

MRS. FARRANT. Well, Mamma, can we do without Mr. Trebell?

LADY DAVENPORT. Everyone seems to think you'll come back with something of a majority.

MRS. FARRANT. [_A little impatient._] What's the good of that? The Bill can't be brought into the Lords . . and who's going to take Disestablishment through the Commons for us? Not Eustace Fowler . . not Mr. Blackborough . . not Lord Charles . . not George!

LADY DAVENPORT. [_Warningly._] Not all your brilliance as a hostess will keep Mr. Trebell in a Tory Cabinet.

MRS. FARRANT. [_With wilful avoidance of the point._] Cyril Horsham is only too glad.

LADY DAVENPORT. Because you tell him he ought to be.

FRANCES TREBELL. [_Coming to the rescue._] There is this. Henry has never exactly called himself a Liberal. He really is elected independently.

MRS. FARRANT. I wonder will all the garden-cities become pocket-boroughs.

FRANCES TREBELL. I think he has made a mistake.

MRS. FARRANT. It makes things easier now . . his having kept his freedom.

FRANCES TREBELL. I think it's a mistake to stand outside a system.

There's an inhumanity in that amount of detachment . .

MRS. FARRANT. [_Brilliantly._] I think a statesman may be a little inhuman.

LADY DAVENPORT. [_With keenness._] Do you mean superhuman? It's not the same thing, you know.

MRS. FARRANT. I know.

LADY DAVENPORT. Most people don't know.

MRS. FARRANT. [_Proceeding with her cynicism._] Humanity achieves . .

what? Housekeeping and children.

FRANCES TREBELL. As far as a woman's concerned.

MRS. FARRANT. [_A little mockingly._] Now, Mamma, say that is as far as a woman's concerned.

LADY DAVENPORT. My dear, you know I don't think so.

MRS. FARRANT. We may none of us think so. But there's our position . .

bread and b.u.t.ter and a certain satisfaction until . . Oh, Mamma, I wish I were like you . . beyond all the pa.s.sions of life.

LADY DAVENPORT. [_With great vitality._] I'm nothing of the sort. It's my egoism's dead . . that's an intimation of mortality.

MRS. FARRANT. I accept the snub. But I wonder what I'm to do with myself for the next thirty years.

FRANCES TREBELL. Help Lord Horsham to govern the country.

JULIA FARRANT _gives a little laugh and takes up the subject this time_.

MRS. FARRANT. Mamma . . how many people, do you think, believe that Cyril's _grande pa.s.sion_ for me takes that form?

LADY DAVENPORT. Everyone who knows Cyril and most people who know you.

MRS. FARRANT. Otherwise I seem to have fulfilled my mission in life. The boys are old enough to go to school. George and I have become happily unconscious of each other.

FRANCES TREBELL. [_With sudden energy of mind._] Till I was forty I never realised the fact that most women must express themselves through men.

MRS. FARRANT. [_Looking at_ FRANCES _a little curiously_.] Didn't your instinct lead you to marry . . or did you fight against it?

FRANCES TREBELL. I don't know. Perhaps I had no vitality to spare.

LADY DAVENPORT. That boy is a long time proposing to Lucy.

_This effectually startles the other two from their conversational reverie._

MRS. FARRANT. Walter? I'm not sure that he means to. She means to marry him if he does.