Through soup we prospered--that is to say, we talked of the weather; and though I said several things about it that surprised me a good deal, yet we both knew that we _were_ talking of the weather.

But since then we have been diverging ever more and more hopelessly.

_He_ is at the shah's visit, and so he imagines am I.I, on the contrary, am at the Bishop of Winchester's death, and, for the last five minutes have been trying, with all the force of my lungs, and with a face rendered scarlet by the double action of heat and of the consciousness of being the object of respectful attention to the whole company, to convey to him that, in my opinion, the deceased prelate ought to have been buried in Westminster Abbey.

I have at last succeeded, at least in so far as to make him understand that I wish _somebody_ to be buried in Westminster Abbey; but, as he still persists in thinking it the shah, we are perhaps not much better off than we were before.

I lean back with a sense of despairing defeat, and, behind my fan, turn to the young man on the other side.