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He made his adieux to Jane and departed, and to Tallente's joy a break-up of the party seemed imminent. Mrs. Ward Levitte drifted out and Lady English followed suit. Lady Somerham also rose to her feet, but after a glance at Tallente sat down again. "My dear Jane," she insisted, "you must dine with us to-night.
Every one with a title is to be interned in an asylum, all country houses are to be turned into sanatoriums and all estates will be confiscated." "The tiresome man won't tell us anything," Lady Alice sighed. "Of course, he won't," Mrs. Ward Levitte observed. "You can't announce a revolution beforehand truthfully."
"Somerham says that Dartrey is a dreamer," the Countess went on, "that you are the man of affairs and the actual head of them all." "Your husband magnifies my position," Tallente assured her. Mrs. Ward Levitte, the wife of a millionaire and a woman of vogue, leaned forward and addressed him. "Do set my mind at rest, Mr. Tallente," she begged.
"Some day," Tallente observed coolly, "it may be worth your while, all of you, to try and master the mental inertia which makes thought a labour; the application which makes a moderately good bridge player should be sufficient. Otherwise, you may find yourselves living in an altered state of Society, without any reasonable idea as to how you got there." Mrs. Ward Levitte turned to her hostess.
"If there is a revolution within the next fifteen years," Tallente said, "I think it will probably be on behalf of the disenfranchised aristocracy, who want the vote back again." Lady English and Mrs. Levitte found something else to talk about between themselves. Lady Somerham, however, had no intention of letting Tallente escape.
"Well, my husband gave two hundred thousand pounds of good, hard-earned money for Stoughton, where we live," Mrs. Ward Levitte intervened. "So far as I know, the money wasn't stolen from anybody, and I should say that the robbery would begin if the Socialists, or whatever they call themselves, tried to take it away from us to distribute amongst their followers. What do you think, Mr. Tallente?
You know my sister, I think Lady Alice Mountgarron? Aunt, may I present Mr. Tallente the Countess of Somerham. Mrs. Ward Levitte Lady English oh! and Colonel Fosbrook." Tallente made the best of a very disappointing situation.
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