r can see when your own side is in the
wrong. But it makes it infernally awkward Torrington's coming here just
now. And Lady Torrington! It upsets us all. I wonder what the devil he's
coming here for?"

"I don't know," said Frank. "Could he be studying the Irish question?
Isn't there some Home Rule Bill or something? Father said next year
would be an Irish year."

"That's it. That must be it. Now I wonder who he expects me to have to
dinner to meet him. There's no use my wiring to Thormanby to come over
for the night. He wouldn't do it. Simply loathes the name of Torrington.
Besides, I don't suppose Thormanby is the kind of man he wants to meet.
He'd probably rather hear Brannigan or some one of that sort talking
damned Nationalism. But I can't ask Brannigan, really can't, you know,
Frank. I might have O'Hara, that's the doctor. I don't suppose my sister
would mind now. She quite dropped Christian Science as soon as she heard
Torrington was coming. But I don't know. O'Hara drinks a bit."

Sir Lucius sat much longer than usual in the dining-room. Frank found
himself yawning with uncontrollable frequency. The long day on the sea
had made him very sleepy. He did his best to disguise his condition from
his uncle, but he felt that his answers to the later questions about
Lord Torrington were vague, and he became more and more confused about
Sir Lucius' views of Woman Suffrage. One thing alone became clear to
him. Sir Lucius was not anxious to join his sister in the drawingroom.
Frank entirely shared his feeling.

But in this twentieth century it is impossible for gentlemen to spend
the whole evening in the dining-room. Wine drinking is no longer
recognised as a valid excuse for the separation of the sexes and tobacco
is so universally tolerated that men carry their cigarettes into the
drawingroom on all but the most ceremonial occasions. Sir Lucius rose at
last.

"It's very hot," said Frank. "May I sit out for a while on the terrace,
Uncle Lucius, before I go into the drawingroom. I'd like a breath of
fresh air."

He hobbled out and found a hammock chair not far from the drawingroom
window. The voices of Miss Lentaigne and his uncle reached him, the
one high-pitched and firm, the other, as he imagined, apologetic and
deprecatory. The sound of them, the words being indistinguishable, was
somewhat soothing. Frank felt as the poet Lucretius did when from the
security of a sheltered nook on the side of a cliff he watched