As the car went up the Haymarket, boys were crying the evening papers. Upon the contents-bill he noticed that the British were fighting gallantly at the Yser, stemming the tide of the Devil's spawn, who were endeavouring to strike a death-blow at French's little army and get through to Calais. He smiled at his own strange thoughts, and then sank back into the soft cushions, again reflecting. That _contretemps_ in the boardroom had really unnerved him. It unnerved him so much, indeed, that from Piccadilly Circus he drove to his club and swallowed a stiff brandy-and-soda--an action quite unusual to him--and then he went along to Upper Brook Street. When the rather pompous elderly butler announced him at the door of the large drawing-room, Lady Betty Kenworthy, a tall, middle-aged woman, rose, greeting the great man affably, and then she introduced him to the dozen or so of her friends who were gossiping over their teacups--the names of most of them being household words both to those in society and the readers of the halfpenny picture-papers out of it. Lady Betty, a well-preserved, good-looking woman, whose boy was at the front, was one of those leaders of society who, at the outbreak of war, for want of something more exciting, had become the leader of a movement. In London, after the first few months of war, the majority of society women took up one movement or another: red cross, Serbian relief, socks for the troops, comforts for mine-sweepers, huts for soldiers, work for women, hose-extensions for Highlanders, or one or other of the thousand-and-one "movements" which cropped up and duly found their places in the advertisement columns of the _Times_. Lady Betty Kenworthy's particular movement was the Anti-Teuton Alliance--an association formed by a few patriotic enthusiasts who bound themselves to take action against the hated German in every way--to expose and intern the enemy in our midst, to free the country from the baneful German influence which has spread into every sphere of our national life, to purchase no goods of German origin, to ban the German language, and to discover the existence of the pro-German sentiment, German intrigue, and the expenditure of German gold--"palm-oil" one distinguished writer has called it--in official and Parliamentary circles. The programme was, to say the least, a wide and laudable one, and afforded ample scope to the thousands of members who had enrolled themselves. In Lady Betty's drawing-room that afternoon the committee of the movement had assembled, eager to meet Mr Lewin Rodwell, who had shown such patriotism that even Cabinet Ministers had publicly bestowed great praise upon his ceaseless and self-denying efforts.