ntive politeness was due. He was
clearly nervous almost to the pitch of jumpiness. He knew he was to be
spoken to about the sugar business directly he saw Charterson, and he
hated being spoken to about the sugar business. He had his code of
honour. Of course one had to make concessions to one's proprietors, but
he could not help feeling that if only they would consent to see his
really quite obvious gentlemanliness more clearly it would be better for
the paper, better for the party, better for them, far better for
himself. He wasn't altogether a fool about that sugar; he knew how
things lay. They ought to trust him more. His nervousness betrayed
itself in many little ways. He crumbled his bread constantly until,
thanks to Snagsby's assiduous replacement, he had made quite a pile of
crumbs, he dropped his glasses in the soup--a fine occasion for
Snagsby's _sang-froid_--and he forgot not to use a fish knife with the
fish as Lady Grove directs and tried when he discovered his error to
replace it furtively on the table cloth. Moreover he kept on patting the
glasses on his nose--after Snagsby had whisked his soup plate away,
rescued, wiped and returned them to him--until that feature glowed
modestly at such excesses of attention, and the soup and sauces and
things bothered his fine blond moustache unusually. So that Mr. Blenker
what with the glasses, the napkin, the food and the things seemed as
restless as a young sparrow. Lady Harman did her duties as hostess in
the quiet key of her sombre dress, and until the conversation drew her
out into unexpected questionings she answered rather than talked, and
she did not look at her husband once throughout the meal.

At first the talk was very largely Charterson. He had no intention of
coming to business with Blenker until Lady Harman had given place to the
port and the man's nerves were steadier. He spoke of this and that in
the large discursive way men use in clubs, and it was past the fish
before the conversation settled down upon the topic of business
organization and Sir Isaac, a little warmed by champagne, came out of
the uneasily apprehensive taciturnity into which he had fallen in the
presence of his wife. Horatio Blenker was keenly interested in the
idealization of commercial syndication, he had been greatly stirred by a
book of Mr. Gerald Stanley Lee's called _Inspired Millionaires_ which
set out to show just what magnificent airs rich men might give
themselves, and he ha