As he spoke the dinner-bell rang, and he held the door open for her to pass from the consideration of these things to the well-appointed table worthy of a house in Belgravia, where the dark-skinned, white-robed servants handed sherry with the soup, and vinegar with the salmon quite as naturally as Jeames or John in their plush liveries. But heredity was here also; Jeames or John's father may have been a day labourer or a gentleman at large, but not one of these could not have answered truthfully--'Huzoor, my father was servant to so-and-so or so-and-so in the great mutiny time, and his father served such and such a sahib in the Sutlej campaign, or in Cabul, or somewhere else.' Faithfulness or unfaithfulness to salt being, of course, a different question; though that also might possibly be one of heredity. Such thoughts strike one sometimes after years of complacent blindness, and on this evening they increased the sense of unreality which had already taken possession of Lewis Gordon. Nor did a remark of Colonel Tweedie's on his daughter's improved looks during the past few days amend matters. He felt that he might be living in that twenty-ninth century, when humanity may reasonably be supposed to have educated itself out of some frailties as, in the necessary glance at the young lady's face required by decorous assent, he met a perfectly unconscious, happy smile, so full of friendly confidence, that a positive gladness glowed at his heart that she should be content with him. Nevertheless he made one more effort to get back finally to the every-day world by riding over to the Club after dinner and listening to the gossip of the day. But there was nothing wrong with the world; it was going on, he found, as usual. He played a game or two of pool, talked gravely with Major Davenant over some new rules intended to prevent such another fiasco as the last race-meeting, heard the latest official canards, and listened more patiently than usual to some boys--who had to go down from leave next day--bemoaning the general beastliness of the country as a residence for an English gentleman. It was only, so the verdict ran, fit for niggers. Yet even this demonstration that life in the main was commonplace as usual, did not restore Lewis Gordon's general indifference. And the knowledge that this was so made him more than ever determined to carry his point when next morning the four met in Rose Tweedie's room, to settle the course of events.