Sir Chichester ate some breakfast and drank some tea.  “No news in your paper is there, Dennis, my boy?” he asked carelessly.

“Oh, isn’t there just?” cried Dennis Brown.  “Oppifex and Hampstead Darling are both running in the two-thirty at Windsor.”

Sir Chichester grunted again.

“Racing!  It’s wonderful, Mr. Albany Todd, that you haven’t got the disease during the week.  There’s a racing microbe at Rackham.”

“But I am not so sure that I have escaped,” returned Mr. Albany Todd.  “I am tempted to go jumping in the winter.”

“You must keep your old Lords out if you do,” Harold Jupp urged earnestly.  “Bring in your Dukes and your Marquises, and we poor men are all up the spout.”

Thus they rattled on about the breakfast table; cigarettes were lighted, Miranda pushed back her chair; in a minute the room would be deserted.  But Millie Splay uttered a little cry of horror, so sharp and startling that it froze each person into a sudden immobility.  She dropped the newspaper upon her knees.  Her hands flew to her face and covered it.

“What’s the matter, Millie?” cried Sir Chichester, starting up in alarm.  He hurried round the table.  Some stab of physical pain had caused Millie’s cry—­he shared that conviction with every one else in the room.  But Millie lifted her head quickly.

“Oh, it’s intolerable!” she exclaimed.  “Chichester, look at this!” She thrust the paper feverishly into his hands.  Sir Chichester smoothed its crumpled leaves as he stood beside her.

“Ah, the Harpoon,” he said, his fear quite allayed.  He knew his wife to have a somewhat thinner skin than himself.  “You are exaggerating no doubt, my dear.  The Harpoon is a good paper and quite friendly.”

But Millie Splay broke in upon his protestations in a voice as shrill as a scream.

“Oh, stop, Chichester, and look!  There, in the third column!  Just under your eyes!”

And Sir Chichester Splay read.  As he read his face changed.

“Yes, that won’t do,” he said, very quietly.  He carried the newspaper back with him to his chair and sat down again.  He had the air of a man struck clean out of his wits.  “That won’t do,” he repeated, and again, with a rush of angry blood into his face, “No, that won’t do.”  It seemed that Sir Chichester’s harmless little foible had suddenly received more than its due punishment.

The newspaper slipped from his fingers on to the floor, whilst he sat staring at the white tablecloth in front of him.  But no sooner did Harold Jupp at his side make a movement to pick the paper up than Sir Chichester swooped down upon it in a flash.

“No!” he said.  “No!” and he began to fold it up very carefully.  “It’s as Millie says, a rather intolerable invention which has crept into the social news.  I must consider what steps we should take.”