ter
Raleigh hung his cloak to dry, after the lady had trodden on it. On the
staircase can be seen the identical spot where the dog basket belonging
to the aged pug dog of the eighteenth Countess of Forres was nightly
placed, to the intense discomfiture of those ill-behaved and rowdy guests
who turned the hours of sleep into a time for revolting debauches with
soda water syphons and flour. In fact it is commonly thought that the
end of the above-mentioned aged pug dog was hastened by the excitable
Lord Frederick de Vere Thomson hurling it, in mistake for a footstool, at
the head of his still more skittish spouse--the celebrated Tootie Rootles
of the Gaiety. This hallowed spot has been roped off, and is shown with
becoming pride by the present owner to any unfortunate he can inveigle
into listening to him. Finally I would draw your attention. . . ."

"For Heaven's sake, stop," she interrupted weakly. "The answer is
adjudged incorrect owing to its length."

"Don't I get the grand piano?" he demanded.

"Not even the bag of nuts," she said firmly. "I want a cigarette.
They're not gaspers, are they?"

"They are not," he said, holding out his case. "I am quite ready for the
second question."

She looked at him thoughtfully through a cloud of smoke. "Somehow I
don't think I will proceed along the regular lines," she remarked at
length. "Your standard seems higher."

"Higher than whose?" Vane asked.

"Than most of the others." Her smile was a trifle enigmatic. "There is
a cavalryman here and one or two others--but . . . well! you know what I
mean."

"I do know what you mean--exactly," he remarked quietly. "And, Joan,
it's all wrong."

"It's all natural, anyway. Their ways are not our ways; their thoughts
are not our thoughts. . . . I can't help whether I'm being a poisonous
snob or not; it's what I feel. Take Sir John. Why, the man's an offence
to the eye. He's a complete outsider. What right has he got to be at
Rumfold?"

"The right of having invented a patent plate. And if one looks at it
from an unbiassed point of view it seems almost as good a claim as that
of the descendant of a really successful brigand chief."

"Are you a Socialist?" she demanded suddenly.

"God knows what I am," he answered cynically. "I'm trying to find out.
You see something has happened over the water which alters one's point of
view. It hasn't happened over here. And just at the moment I feel
rather like a strang