“I fail to see,” said I, growing angry, “how the horse could have imbued her with depravity, and I’m given to understand that the tone of the circus is not quite what it used to be in the days of the Empress Theodora.”

A ripple passed over Agatha’s bare shoulders, which I knew to be a suppressed shrug.

“I suppose men and women look at these things differently,” she remarked, and from the stiffness of her tone I divined that the idea of moral qualities lurking in the nature of Lola Brandt occasioned her considerable displeasure.

“I hope——­” She paused.  There was another ripple.  “No.  I had better not say it.  It’s none of my business, after all.”

“I don’t think it is, my dear,” said I.

Rogers bringing in the cutlets ended the snippet of talk.

It was not the cheeriest of dinners.  I took advantage of the next interval of quiet to inquire after Dale.  I learned that the poor boy had almost collapsed after the election and was now yachting with young Lord Essendale somewhere about the Hebrides.  Agatha had not seen him, but Lady Kynnersley had called on her one day in a distracted frame of mind, bitterly reproaching me for the unhappiness of her son.  I should never have suspected that such fierce maternal love could burn beneath Lady Kynnersley’s granite exterior.  She accused me of treachery towards Dale and, most illogically, of dishonourable conduct towards herself.

“She said things about you,” said Agatha, “for which, even if they were true, I couldn’t forgive her.  So that’s an end of that friendship.  Indeed, it has been very difficult, Simon,” she continued, “to keep up with our common friends.  It has placed us in the most painful and delicate position.  And now you’re back, I’m afraid it will be worse.”

Thus under all Agatha’s affection there ran the general hostility of London.  Guilty or not, I had offended her in her most deeply rooted susceptibilities, and as yet she only knew half the imbroglio in which I was enmeshed.  Over coffee, however, she began to take a more optimistic view of affairs.

“After all, you’ll be able to live it down,” she said with a cheerful air of patronage.  “People soon forget.  Before the year is out you’ll be going about just as usual, and at the General Election you’ll find a seat somewhere.”

I informed her that I had given up politics.  What then, she asked, would I do for an occupation?

“Work for my living,” I replied.

“Work?” She arched her eyebrows, as if it were the most extraordinary thing a man could do.  “What kind of work?”

“Road-sweeping or tax-collecting or envelope-addressing.”

She selected a cigarette from the silver box in front of her, and did not reply until she had lit it and inhaled a puff or two.

“I wish you wouldn’t be so flippant, Simon.”

From this remark I inferred that I still was in the criminal dock before this lady Chief Justice.  I smiled at the airs the little woman gave herself now that I was no longer the impeccable and irreproachable dictator of the family.  Mine was the experience of every fallen tyrant since the world began.