Mr. Britling had a moment of exposition as they approached the entrance.

“I expect we shall find Philbert from the Home Office—­or is it the Local Government Board?—­and Sir Thomas Loot, the Treasury man.  There may be some other people of that sort, the people we call the Governing Class.  Wives also.  And I rather fancy the Countess of Frensham is coming, she’s strong on the Irish Question, and Lady Venetia Trumpington, who they say is a beauty—­I’ve never seen her.  It’s Lady Homartyn’s way to expect me to come in—­not that I’m an important item at these week-end social feasts—­but she likes to see me on the table—­to be nibbled at if any one wants to do so—­like the olives and the salted almonds.  And she always asks me to lunch on Sunday and I always refuse—­because of the hockey.  So you see I put in an appearance on the Saturday afternoon....”

They had reached the big doorway.

It opened into a large cool hall adorned with the heads of hippopotami and rhinoceroses and a stuffed lion, and furnished chiefly with a vast table on which hats and sticks and newspapers were littered.  A manservant with a subdued, semi-confidential manner, conveyed to Mr. Britling that her ladyship was on the terrace, and took the hats and sticks that were handed to him and led the way through the house.  They emerged upon a broad terrace looking out under great cedar trees upon flower beds and stone urns and tennis lawns and yew hedges that dipped to give a view of distant hills.  On the terrace were grouped perhaps a dozen people for the most part holding teacups, they sat in deck chairs and folding seats about a little table that bore the tea-things.  Lady Homartyn came forward to welcome the newcomers.

Mr. Direck was introduced as a travelling American gratified to see a typical English country house, and Lady Homartyn in an habituated way ran over the points of her Tudor specimen.  Mr. Direck was not accustomed to titled people, and was suddenly in doubt whether you called a baroness “My Lady” or “Your Ladyship,” so he wisely avoided any form of address until he had a lead from Mr. Britling.  Mr. Britling presently called her “Lady Homartyn.”  She took Mr. Direck and sat him down beside a lady whose name he didn’t catch, but who had had a lot to do with the British Embassy at Washington, and then she handed Mr. Britling over to the Rt.  Honble.  George Philbert, who was anxious to discuss certain points in the latest book of essays.  The conversation of the lady from Washington was intelligent but not exacting, and Mr. Direck was able to give a certain amount of attention to the general effect of the scene.