Texel.  Excellent!  Excellent!

Alcar. (Interrupting a gesture from carve.) You have all done me a signal favour by coming here.  In thanking you, I wonder if I may ask another favour.  May I?

Texel.  Certainly.  Among kindred spirits.

Ebag.  Assuredly, my lord.

Alcar.  I would merely request you to control so far as possible any expression of your astonishment at meeting one another here.  That is to say, any violent expression.

Carve. (Gaily and carelessly.) Oh, very well!  Very well!

(Lord Leonard Alcar waves the rest of the company into chairs, tactfully separating Cyrus and carve as much as possible.  He remains standing himself.)

Janet.  I suppose what you really want is to stop this funny trial from coming on.

Alcar. (Slightly taken aback.) Mrs. X, I congratulate myself on your presence here.  Yes, my ambition is to be peacemaker.  Of course a peacemaker always runs the risk of a broken head, but I shall entrust my head to your good nature.  As a proof that I really mean business, I need only point out that I haven’t invited a single lawyer.

Ebag. (After slight pause.) This is exceedingly good of your lordship.

Texel.  For myself I’m rather looking forward to next week.  I’ve spared no expense to get up a first-class show.  Half the papers in New York and Chicago are sending over special correspondents.  I’ve even secured your champion humorous judge; and altogether I reckon this trial will be about the greatest judicial proposition the British public’s seen in years.  Still, I’m always ready to oblige—­and I’ll shake hands right now, on terms—­my terms.

Alcar.  We are making progress.

Texel.  But what I don’t understand is—­where you come in, Lord
Leonard.

Alcar.  Where I come in?

Texel.  Well, I don’t want to be personal, but is this Hague Conference merely your hobby, or are you standing in with somebody?

Alcar.  I quite appreciate your delicacy.  Let me assure you that, though it gives me the greatest pleasure to see you all, I have not selected you as the victims of a hobby.  Nor have I anything whatever to gain by stopping the trial.  The reverse.  At the trial I should probably have a seat on the bench next to a delightful actress, and I should enjoy the case very much indeed.  I have no doubt that even now the learned judge is strenuously preparing his inimitable flashes of humour, and that, like the rest of the world, I should allow myself to be convulsed by them.  I like to think of four K.C.’s toiling hard for a miserable hundred guineas a day each.  I like to think of the solicitors, good, honest fellows, striving their best to keep the costs as low as possible.  I even like to think of the jury with their powerful intellects who, when we are