“Mr. Richard Dalloway,” continued Vinrace, “seems to be a gentleman who thinks that because he was once a member of Parliament, and his wife’s the daughter of a peer, they can have what they like for the asking.  They got round poor little Jackson anyhow.  Said they must have passages—­produced a letter from Lord Glenaway, asking me as a personal favour—­overruled any objections Jackson made (I don’t believe they came to much), and so there’s nothing for it but to submit, I suppose.”

But it was evident that for some reason or other Willoughby was quite pleased to submit, although he made a show of growling.

The truth was that Mr. and Mrs. Dalloway had found themselves stranded in Lisbon.  They had been travelling on the Continent for some weeks, chiefly with a view to broadening Mr. Dalloway’s mind.  Unable for a season, by one of the accidents of political life, to serve his country in Parliament, Mr. Dalloway was doing the best he could to serve it out of Parliament.  For that purpose the Latin countries did very well, although the East, of course, would have done better.

“Expect to hear of me next in Petersburg or Teheran,” he had said, turning to wave farewell from the steps of the Travellers’.  But a disease had broken out in the East, there was cholera in Russia, and he was heard of, not so romantically, in Lisbon.  They had been through France; he had stopped at manufacturing centres where, producing letters of introduction, he had been shown over works, and noted facts in a pocket-book.  In Spain he and Mrs. Dalloway had mounted mules, for they wished to understand how the peasants live.  Are they ripe for rebellion, for example?  Mrs. Dalloway had then insisted upon a day or two at Madrid with the pictures.  Finally they arrived in Lisbon and spent six days which, in a journal privately issued afterwards, they described as of “unique interest.”  Richard had audiences with ministers, and foretold a crisis at no distant date, “the foundations of government being incurably corrupt.  Yet how blame, etc.”; while Clarissa inspected the royal stables, and took several snapshots showing men now exiled and windows now broken.  Among other things she photographed Fielding’s grave, and let loose a small bird which some ruffian had trapped, “because one hates to think of anything in a cage where English people lie buried,” the diary stated.  Their tour was thoroughly unconventional, and followed no meditated plan.  The foreign correspondents of the Times decided their route as much as anything else.  Mr. Dalloway wished to look at certain guns, and was of opinion that the African coast is far more unsettled than people at home were inclined to believe.  For these reasons they wanted a slow inquisitive kind of ship, comfortable, for they were bad sailors, but not extravagant, which would stop for a day or two at this port and at that, taking in coal while the Dalloways saw things for themselves.  Meanwhile they found themselves stranded in Lisbon,