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.

FRANCES TREBELL. Has she told you so?

MRS. FARRANT. No. I judge by her business-like interest in his welfare.

FRANCES TREBELL. He's beginning to feel the responsibility of manhood ...

doesn't know whether to be frightened or proud of it.

LADY DAVENPORT. It's a pretty thing to watch young people mating. When they're older and marry from disappointment or deliberate choice, thinking themselves so worldly-wise....

MRS. FARRANT, [_Back to her politely cynical mood._] Well ... then at least they don't develop their differences at the same fire-side, regretting the happy time when neither possessed any character at all.

LADY DAVENPORT. [_Giving a final douche of common sense._] My dear, any two reasonable people ought to be able to live together.

FRANCES TREBELL. Granted three sitting rooms. That'll be the next middle-cla.s.s political cry ... when women are heard.

MRS. FARRANT. [_Suddenly as practical as her mother._] Walter's lucky ...

Lucy won't stand any nonsense. She'll have him in the Cabinet by the time he's fifty.

LADY DAVENPORT. And are you the power behind your brother, Miss Trebell?

FRANCES TREBELL. [_Gravely._] He ignores women. I've forced enough good manners on him to disguise the fact decently. His affections are two generations ahead.

MRS. FARRANT. People like him in an odd sort of way.

FRANCES TREBELL. That's just respect for work done ... one can't escape from it.

_There is a slight pause in their talk. By some not very devious route_ MRS. FARRANT'S _mind travels to the next subject._

MRS. FARRANT. f.a.n.n.y ... how fond are you of Amy O'Connell?

FRANCES TREBELL. She says we're great friends.

MRS. FARRANT. She says that of me.

FRANCES TREBELL. It's a pity about her husband.