't tell us anything," Lady Alice sighed.

"Of course, he won't," Mrs. Ward Levitte observed. "You can't announce
a revolution beforehand truthfully."

"If there is a revolution within the next fifteen years," Tallente said,
"I think it will probably be on behalf of the disenfranchised
aristocracy, who want the vote back again."

Lady English and Mrs. Levitte found something else to talk about
between themselves. Lady Somerham, however, had no intention of letting
Tallente escape.

"You are a neighbour of my niece in Devonshire, I believe?" she asked.

He admitted the fact monosyllabically. He was supremely uncomfortable,
and it seemed to him that Jane, who was conducting an apparently
entertaining conversation with Colonel Fosbrook, might have done
something to rescue him.

"My niece has very broad ideas," Lady Somerham went on. "Some of her
fellow landowners in Devonshire are very much annoyed with the way she
has been getting rid of her property."

"Lady Jane," he pronounced drily, "is in my opinion very wise. She is
anticipating the legislation to come, which will inevitably restore the
land to the people, from whom, in most cases, it was stolen."

"Well, my husband gave two hundred thousand pounds of good, hard-earned
money for Stoughton, where we live," Mrs. Ward Levitte intervened. "So
far as I know, the money wasn't stolen from anybody, and I should say
that the robbery would begin if the Socialists, or whatever they call
themselves, tried to take it away from us to distribute amongst their
followers. What do you think, Mr. Tallente? My husband, as I dare say
you know, is a banker and a very hard-working man."

"I agree with you," he replied. "One of the pleasing features of the
axioms of Socialism adopted by the Democratic Party is that it respects
the rights of the wealthy as well as the rights of the poor man. The
Democrats may--in fact, they most certainly will--legislate to prevent
the hoarding of wealth or to have it handed down to unborn generations,
but I can assure you that it does not propose to interfere with the
ethics of _meum_ and _tuum_."

"I wish I could make out what it's all about," Lady Alice murmured.

"Couldn't you give a drawing-room lecture, Mr. Tallente, and tell us?"
the banker's wife suggested.

"I am unfortunately a little short of time for such missionary
enterprise," Tallente replied, with unappreciated sarcasm. "Dartrey's
volume on 'Socialism in Our Daily Life' will tel