"This is perfectly charming of you, Mr. Tallente," she said. "I know how busy you must be in the afternoons, but I am afraid I am old-fashioned enough to like my men friends to sometimes forget even the affairs of the nation. 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. He exchanged bows with his new acquaintances, declined tea and was at once taken possession of by Lady Somerham, a formidable-looking person in tortoise-shell-rimmed spectacles, with a rasping voice and a judicial air.
"So you are the Mr. Tallente," she began, "who Somerham tells me has achieved the impossible!"
"Upon the face of it," Tallente rejoined, with a smile, "your husband is proved guilty of an exaggeration."
"Poor Henry!" his wife sighed. "He does get a little hysterical about politics nowadays. What he says is that you are in a fair way to form a coherent and united political party out of the various factions of Labour, a thing which a little time ago no one thought possible."
Tallente promptly disclaimed the achievement.
"Stephen Dartrey is the man who did that," he declared. "I only joined the Democrats a few months ago."
"But you are their leader," Lady Alice put in.
"Only in the House of Commons," Tallente replied.
"Dartrey is the leader of the party."