"Your father likes to amuse himself with curious ideas," Mrs. Belfield remarked. "So did my father; he once asked me what I thought would happen if I didn't say my prayers. Men like to ask questions like that, but I never pay much attention to them. Shall we go into the drawing-room, Vivien? It may be warm enough for a turn in the garden, perhaps." She addressed the men. "Bring your cigars and try." The men were left alone. "The garden would be jolly," said Harry. Mr. Belfield coughed, and suddenly wheezed. "Intimations of mortality!" he said apologetically. "We've talked of a variety of subjects--to little purpose, I suppose. But it's entertaining to survey the field of humanity. Your views were briefly expressed, Hayes." "Everybody else was talking such a lot, sir," said Andy. Belfield's humorous laugh was entangled in a cough. "You'll never get that obstacle out of the way of your oratory," he managed to stutter out. "They always are! Talk rules the world--eh, Wellgood?" He was maliciously provocative. "We wait till they've finished talking. Then we do what we want," said Wellgood. "Force rules in the end--the readiness to kill and be killed. That's the _ultima ratio_, the final argument." "The women say that's out of date." "The women!" exclaimed Wellgood contemptuously. "They'll be in the garden," Harry opined. "Shall we move, pater?" "We might as well," said Belfield. "Are you ready, Wellgood?" Wellgood was ready--in spite of his contempt. Chapter VI. THE WORLDS OF MERITON. The garden at Halton was a pleasant place on a fine evening, with a moon waxing, yet not obtrusively full, with billowing shrubberies, clear-cut walks, lawns spreading in a gentle drabness that would be bright green in to-morrow's sun--a place pleasant in its calm, its spaciousness and isolation. They all sat together in a ring for a while; smoke curled up; a servant brought glasses that clinked as they were set down with a cheery, yet not urgent, suggestion. "I suppose you're right to go in for it," said Wellgood to Harry. "It's your obvious line." (He was referring to a public career.) "But, after all, it's casting pearls before swine." "Swine!" The note of exclamation was large. "Our masters, Mr. Wellgood!" "A decent allowance of bran, and a ring through their noses--that's the thing for them!" "Has anybody got a copy--well, another copy of 'Coriolanus'?" Harry inquired in an affectation of eagerness. "Casting pearls before swine is bad business, of course," said Belfield in his husky voice--he was really unwise to be out of doors at all; "but there are degrees of badness. If your pearls are indifferent as pearls, and your swine admirable as swine? And that's often the truth of it." "My husband is sometimes perverse in his talk, my dear," said Mrs. Belfield, aside to Vivien, to whom she was being very kind. "You needn't notice what he says." "He's rather amusing," Vivien ventured, not quite sure whether the adjective were respectful enough.