Lucy, of course, after a few lessons abandoned any attempt to play bridge (people in 1897 debated whether bicycling, bridge, the Bible, or herbaceous borders had brought the greatest happiness to Britain: we, in after life, see it was the bicycle). She was scared by the subterranean forces it aroused and lit up in the angry eyes around her, the fortunes that were involved in the plunge of No Trumps, the awful penalties attendant on a revoke, the fate that hung on a finesse. So she wisely declined to play and talked—or rather listened—to the one who cut out; or if several tables were made up, she dispensed drinks and sweets and a sandwich supper. The Rev. Stacy Bream, vaguely nettled by her rival Christianity, glanced at her once, remembered years ago she had been Sibyl’s butt, and inquired of Sibyl "who her people were, what her father was?" "One of the best farmers in Berkshire," said Sibyl. "Mine is—or was—for I had to buy him up—one of the worst.... What was _your_ father, by the bye? It never occurred to me to ask you before...." The Rev. Stacy’s father had really been a very pushing Agent for a firm of Decorators and Wall-paper designers: so he replied with a sigh: "A great, _great_ traveller, dear lady; a man who loved Colour and Design better than his immortal soul, I fear.... It’s to you to cut...." But Sibyl had not confined her Highland house-party to these worn-out fribbles. Bream had his uses. He would be there to assoil a guest who might get shot in the shooting, and so perhaps save the unpleasantness of an inquest; and his stories of people on the fringe of Society were the equivalent and the accompaniment in midnight chat—just before you took your bedroom candle—of pâté-de-foie sandwiches and cherry brandy. Vicky Masham kept you right with Queen Victoria; Lucy was a reminder to her not to make a fool of herself with Roger ... perhaps also there was a little gratitude in her hard nature for the good a year of Lucy’s society had wrought in her little son’s health and disposition. But she wanted—more than ever at thirty-six—to be a political woman, to make a difference in the world, hand her name down in history, change or shape history in fact. It had occurred to her, as it did to fifty other mature, handsome, well-placed women of ambition, to marry Cecil Rhodes; but the Jacobzoon Raid and still more the eager rivalry of other ladies, perfectly shameless in their frontal attacks on the Colossus, soon thwarted any such idea ... reduced it indeed, to such a ridiculous impossibility that it was only confided to her locked diary. She had fortunately withdrawn her half-promise from Sir Elijah Tooley at the very first hint that there was a crack in his reservoir of wealth. Otherwise—with a couple of millions of his money ... and he could have had his own suite of apartments, and she would have stopped him waxing his moustaches ... she might have over-turned her world.... Then there