"We might have gone into the billiard-room and heard politics. I heard them going on through the door a little while ago. Mr. ... what's his name?--the politician...." "Mr. Ramsey Tomes?" "Mr. Ramsey Tomes. I gathered that he was giving details of his great scheme of Reciprocal Interdependent Taxation of Imports--what he touched upon at dinner last night...." "Don't let me disturb the chess!" says a passer through the room. It is Lady Arkroyd with an armful of some form of embroidery which no one is on any account to assist her in carrying to the drawing-room beyond. But what she means is, "Don't arrest my progress. Mind your own business." Challis makes a convulsive suggestion of willingness to assist the Universe, but doesn't mean anything at all by it; and her ladyship floats away, leaving him normal. But his plunge, overdone from dramatic motives, has knocked the board over. The Fates seem to league together to throw cold water on this ill-starred game. Judith conveys the fact by a shrug, but adds a smile, that it may be understood there is no _amertume_ in the situation. Further, she says she can hear Tea. A sense that Life's problem is solved for the moment mixes with a consciousness of hairbrush-time come again, and Mr. Challis disperses to reassemble presently and enjoy it. How it is pouring, to be sure! And how grateful one feels to it--abstraction though it be--for doing it in earnest, and making an end of all doubts whether we may not get out for a turn later. Nobody is going to do that to-day. Challis encounters young Lord Felixthorpe on the stairs, coming from the billiard-room. He is always amiable and well-mannered, this young nobleman, and manages to make everyone think he has their good opinion of him at heart. But he often seems to be seeking their sympathy with his derision of someone else. Or of himself, for that matter--so Challis goes on thinking, for all this is what passes in _his_ mind; the story does not vouch for its truth. During their slow ascent of the great staircase together, he is more than half-convinced that the young toff really cares about his views on motoring. "I am quite aware," says his lordship, pausing at a corner, as though one might go upstairs at any slowness, even with the young man Samuel and a colleague agglomerating gilded porcelain within hearing as tea-factors. "I am quite aware, my dear Mr. Challis, that the motor-car is at present an object of execration to the public. But I sympathize so keenly that I feel bound to spend as much time as possible in the only place in which I am not tempted to forget myself and use bad language against motorists. I refer to the motor-car itself. Believe me that the only thing that can reconcile a well-constituted mind to any practice essentially damnable is the practice itself. I shall look forward to your accompanying me in my Panhard, after a profusion of curses perfectly reasonably directed against it--in which you will have my sincerest sympathy."