"You don't suggest, Glorvina, that I'm the distressed rich with a foreign name!" The great lady had said: "My dear Sylvia; it isn't so much you as your husband. Your last exploit with the Esterhazys and Metternichs has pretty well done for _him_. You forget that the present powers that be are not logical. . . ." Sylvia remembered that she had sprung up from her leather saddle-back chair, exclaiming: "You mean to say that those unspeakable swine think that _I'm_ . . ." Glorvina said patiently: "My dear Sylvia, I've already said it's not you. It's your husband that suffers. He appears to be too good a fellow to suffer. Mr. Waterhouse says so. I don't know him myself, well." Sylvia remembered that she had said: "And who in the world is Mr. Waterhouse?" and, hearing that Mr. Waterhouse was a late Liberal Minister, had lost interest. She couldn't, indeed, remember any of the further words of her hostess, as words. The sense of them had too much overwhelmed her. . . . She stood now, looking at Tietjens and only occasionally seeing him, her mind completely occupied with the effort to recapture Glorvina's own words in the desire for exactness. Usually she remembered conversations pretty well; but on this occasion her mad fury, her feeling of nausea, the pain of her own nails in her palms, an unrecoverable sequence of emotions had overwhelmed her. She looked at Tietjens now with a sort of gloating curiosity. How was it possible that the most honourable man she knew should be so overwhelmed by foul and baseless rumours? It made you suspect that honour had, in itself, a quality of the evil eye. . . . Tietjens, his face pallid, was fingering a piece of toast. He muttered: "Met . . . Met . . . It's Met . . ." He wiped his brow with a table-napkin, looked at it with a start, threw it on the floor and pulled out a handkerchief. . . . He muttered: "Mett . . . Metter . . ." His face illuminated itself like the face of a child listening at a shell. Sylvia screamed with a passion of hatred: "For God's sake say _Metternich_ . . . you're driving me mad!" When she looked at him again his face had cleared and he was walking quickly to the telephone in the corner of the room. He asked her to excuse him and gave a number at Ealing. He said after a moment: