consternation, but
was powerless to send him even an answering message of sympathy. She
held out her hand and welcomed him with a smile.

"This is perfectly charming of you, Mr. Tallente," she said. "I know
how busy you must be in the afternoons, but I am afraid I am
old-fashioned enough to like my men friends to sometimes forget even the
affairs of the nation. You know my sister, I think--Lady Alice
Mountgarron? Aunt, may I present Mr. Tallente--the Countess of
Somerham. Mrs. Ward Levitte--Lady English--oh! and Colonel Fosbrook."

Tallente made the best of a very disappointing situation. He exchanged
bows with his new acquaintances, declined tea and was at once taken
possession of by Lady Somerham, a formidable-looking person in
tortoise-shell-rimmed spectacles, with a rasping voice and a judicial
air.

"So you are the Mr. Tallente," she began, "who Somerham tells me has
achieved the impossible!"

"Upon the face of it," Tallente rejoined, with a smile, "your husband is
proved guilty of an exaggeration."

"Poor Henry!" his wife sighed. "He does get a little hysterical about
politics nowadays. What he says is that you are in a fair way to form a
coherent and united political party out of the various factions of
Labour, a thing which a little time ago no one thought possible."

Tallente promptly disclaimed the achievement.

"Stephen Dartrey is the man who did that," he declared. "I only joined
the Democrats a few months ago."

"But you are their leader," Lady Alice put in.

"Only in the House of Commons," Tallente replied.

"Dartrey is the leader of the party."

"Somerham says that Dartrey is a dreamer," the Countess went on, "that
you are the man of affairs and the actual head of them all."

"Your husband magnifies my position," Tallente assured her.

Mrs. Ward Levitte, the wife of a millionaire and a woman of vogue,
leaned forward and addressed him.

"Do set my mind at rest, Mr. Tallente," she begged. "Are you going to
break up our homes and divide our estates amongst the poor?"

"Is there going to be a revolution?" Lady English asked eagerly. "And
is it true that you are in league with all the Bolshevists on the
continent?"

Tallente masked his irritation and answered with a smile.

"Civil war," he declared, "commences to-morrow. Every one with a title
is to be interned in an asylum, all country houses are to be turned into
sanatoriums and all estates will be confiscated."

"The tiresome man won