“How can you expect to be well, if you go on drinking tea for ever and ever?” he said to the only harmless member of the party. “Afternoon tea must have been invented by the devil himself to destroy women’s nerves and their constitutions.” He said this as loudly and with the same intention as had moved Everard; and he had more success, for Dropmore, Alf, and the rest turned round with their teacups in their hands, and showed their excellent teeth under their moustachios in a roar of laughter. “I had not the least idea I was so amusing,” said Mr. Farrel, sourer than ever. “Here, Everard, let me have a word with you.” “By Jove! he _is_ down on his luck,” said Lord Alf to Sophy in an audible aside. “Didn’t I tell you so?” said the elegant young lady; “and when he’s low he’s always as cross as two sticks.” “Everard,” said Mr. Farrel-Austin, “I am going over to Whiteladies on business. That old witch, Susan Austin, has outwitted us both. As it is your interest as well as mine, you had better drive over with me--unless you prefer the idiocy here to all the interests of life, as some of these fools seem to do.” “Not I,” said Everard with much stateliness, “as you may perceive, for I am taking no part in it. I am quite at your service. But if it’s about poor Herbert, I don’t see what Miss Susan can have to do with it,” he added, casting a longing look behind. “Bah! Herbert is neither here nor there,” said the heir-presumptive. “You don’t suppose I put any faith in that. She has spread the rumor, perhaps, to confuse us and put us off the scent. These old women,” said Mr. Farrel with deliberate virulence, “are the very devil when they put their minds to it. And you are as much interested as I am, Everard, as I have no son--and what with the absurdity and perverseness of women,” he added, setting his teeth with deliberate virulence, “don’t seem likely to have.” I don’t know whether the company in the drawing-room heard this speech. Indeed, I do not think they could have heard it, being fully occupied by their own witty and graceful conversation. But there came in at this moment a burst of laughter which drove the two gentlemen furious in quite different ways, as they strode with all the dignity of ill-temper down stairs. Farrel-Austin did not care for the Guardsmen’s laughter in itself, nor was he critical of the manners of his daughters, but he was in a state of irritation which any trifle would have made to boil over. And Everard was in that condition of black disapproval which every word and tone increases, and to which the gayety of a laugh is the direst of offences. He would have laughed as gayly as any of them had he been seated where Lord Alf was; but being “out of it,” to use their own elegant language, he could see nothing but what was objectionable, insolent, nay, disgusting, in the sound.