The next day he spent some hours with Mr. Clutterbuck, drilling his speech into him with unwearied repetition; and Charlie Fitzgerald, having nothing better to do, called on his dear old friend the Duke of Battersea, and passed with him a most delightful afternoon. Mr. Clutterbuck and Fitzgerald met at Victoria. The merchant and his secretary went home together. And that same evening the Duke of Battersea did what he had to do. A telephone message to the Prime Minister's house and the assurance of a hearty welcome, made what he had to do easier for him. He found that statesman, still spirited and young in spite of his increasing trouble with the left lung, crouched over the fire, spreading his hands to the blaze. He talked to him of various things: of the session that was about to open, of the plague in Burmah, of Mrs. Kempton's latest book. He said a few words about Mr. Bailey, and casually mentioned the step which that gentleman was apparently about to take. For a man in such doubtful health (and for one before whom such arduous duties immediately lay) the Prime Minister was quite vivacious in his replies. He differed from the Duke of Battersea with regard to Mrs. Kempton's latest book, and criticised her attitude towards Malthus. He spoke cheerfully of the coming session though he joked a little about the smallness of the majority; he was very grave indeed about the plague in Burmah--and he said nothing at all about Mr. Bailey. The Duke of Battersea remained not more than twenty minutes. It was his interest to show his sympathy with the Prime Minister's illness rather than to detain him in conversation, and he could understand that the amusing story of Mr. Bailey's fanatical outburst would be touched on lightly or passed in silence by a man who sat in the same Cabinet with Lord Burpham; for after all, Lord Burpham's son, since the Duchess of Drayton's second marriage was stepfather to the girl whom William Bailey's favourite nephew had recently married, and relations of this kind, when they occur in the political life of our democracy, are naturally sacred. For all the shortness of his visit, the Duke of Battersea had learnt what he wanted to know. He did not depend upon the Prime Minister's aid. He re-entered his car with an alternative scheme clear before him, and when he reached home he began to carry it into effect. In the midst of the room where the Philanthropist and Financier habitually worked, was a large table which had formerly been the property of the Cardinal de Rohan; it had passed into other hands during the misfortunes of the Reinachs[10] some twenty odd years before. Its broad surface supported but a few simple and necessary things: two tall Georgian candlesticks of silver plate, now fitted with electric lamps; a great ink-pot, and by the side of it an electric bell.