u'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 butter and a certain satisfaction until ... Oh, Mamma, I wish I were
like you ... beyond all the passions 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 passion_ 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. Ge