A Dowager Duchess, she knows none of the other people and wonders audibly (to me) who they are.  A clever young man, whose language is the language of the future, and whose humour is of a date to which I humbly hope my own days may not be prolonged.  A Psychical Researcher, with a note-book; he gets at the Duchess at once, and cross-examines her about a visionary Piper who plays audible pibrochs through Castle Blawearie, her ancestral home.  Does she think the pibroch could be taken down in a phonograph.  Could the Piper be snapped in a kodak?  The Duchess does not know what a phonograph is; never heard of a kodak.  She does not like the note-book any more than Mr. Pickwick’s cabman liked it.  She is afraid of getting into print.  Then there is the Warden of St. Jude’s, a great scholar; he pricks up his ears, not the keenest, at the word kodak, and begins to talk about a newly-discovered Codex of PODONIAN the Elder.  Nobody knows what a Codex is.  There is a School-board Lady, but, alas, she is next the Warden of St. Jude’s, not next the enthusiastic Clergyman, who proses about a Club for Milliners.  There is GRIGSBY, who develops an undesirable interest in the Milliners’ Club.  Have they a Strangers’ Room?  Do they give suppers?  Are they Friendly Girls?  Everyone thinks GRIGSBY flippant and coarse; I wish I had not asked him to come.  There is a Positivist, who sneers at the Clergyman; there are a Squire and his wife from Rutlandshire:  she is next the Radical Candidate for the Isle of Dogs.  They do not seem to get on well together.  GRIGSBY and the humorist of the future are chaffing each other across the table:  nobody understands them; I don’t know whether they are quarrelling or not.  Miss JONES, the authoress of Melancholy Moods (in a Greek dress, with a pince-nez:  a woman should not combine these attributes) is next the Squire:  he has never heard of any of her friends the Minor Poets:  she takes no interest in Hay, nor in Tithes.  I see the Guardsman and the Beauty looking at each other across the flowers and things:  the language of their eyes is not difficult, nor pleasant, to read.  Why is the champagne so hot, and why are the ices so salt and hard?  I know something is the matter with the claret:  something is always the matter with the claret.  It has been iced, and the champagne has been standing for days in an equable temperature of 65 deg..

[Illustration:  “It is midnight; I am tired to death.  Yes, Bielby will have something to drink, and another cigar—­a very large one.”]

When they want to go away, it is a wet night, and those who have come in cabs cannot get cabs to go back in.  The Duchess’s coachman lost his way, coming here, she was half-an-hour late:  she is anxious about his finding his way home.  GRIGSBY has got at the Psychical-Researcher, and I hear him telling stories, as personal experiences, which I know are not true.  Psychical-Researchers have no sense of humour.  “S.P.R.,” why not “S.P.Q.R.?” I hear GRIGSBY asking, and suggesting “Society for Propagating Rubbish.”  It is very rude of him, and not at all funny.