'It certainly is one aspect of you----' 'Don't you think his Velasquez-like use of black and white----' 'The tiny Tunbridges, as I was saying,' she went on imperturbably, 'were having a teafight when I got there. I say "fight" advisedly.' 'Then I'll warrant,' said their uncle, 'that Sara was the aggressor.' 'She was.' 'You saw Mrs. Freddy?' asked Lady John, with an interest half amused, half cynical, in her eyes. 'For a moment.' 'She doesn't confess it, I suppose,' the hostess went on, 'but I imagine she is rather perturbed;' and Lady John glanced at Borrodaile with her good-humoured, worldly-wise smile. 'Poor Mrs. Freddy!' said Vida. 'You see, she's taken it all quite seriously--this Suffrage nonsense.' 'Yes;' Mrs. Freddy's brother-in-law had met Lady John's look with the same significant smile as that lady's own--'Yes, she's naturally feeling rather crestfallen--perhaps she'll _see_ now!' 'Mrs. Freddy crestfallen, what about?' said Farnborough. But he was much preoccupied at that moment in supplying Lady Sophia with bits of toast the exact size for balancing on the Bedlington's nose. For the benefit of his end of the table Paul Filey had begun to describe the new one-man show of caricatures of famous people just opened in Bond Street. The 'mordant genius,' as he called it, of this new man--an American Jew--offered an irresistible opportunity for phrase-making. And still on the other side of the tea urn the Ullands were discussing with Borrodaile and Miss Levering the absent lady whose 'case' was obviously a matter of concern to her friends. 'Well, let us hope,' Lord John was saying as sternly as his urbanity permitted--'let us hope this exhibition in the House will be a lesson to her.' '_She_ wasn't concerned in it!' Vida quickly defended her. 'Nevertheless we are all hoping,' said Lady John, 'that it has come just in time to prevent her from going over the edge.' 'Over the edge!' Farnborough pricked up his ears at last in good earnest, feeling that the conversation on the other side had grown too interesting for him to be out of it any longer. 'Over what edge?' 'The edge of the Woman Suffrage precipice,' said Lady John. 'You call it a precipice?' Vida Levering raised her dark brows in a little smile. 'Don't you?' demanded her hostess. 'I should say mud-puddle.' 'From the point of view of the artist'--Paul Filey had begun laying down some new law, but turning an abrupt corner, he followed the wandering attention of his audience--'from the point of view of the artist,' he repeated, 'it would be interesting to know what the phenomenon is, that Lady John took for a precipice and that Miss Levering says is a mud-puddle.' 'Oh,' said Lord John, thinking it well to generalize and spare Mrs. Freddy further rending, 'we've been talking about this public demonstration of the unfitness of women for public affairs.'