You see, for me, the scene was a veiled flirtation and I wanted to get on.

But I had to listen to her fantastic scheme of things.

It was really a duel between Fox, the Journal-founder, and Gurnard, the Chancellor of the Exchequer.
Fox, with Churchill, the Foreign Minister, and his supporters, for pieces, played what he called "the Old Morality business" against Gurnard, who passed for a cynically immoral politician.
I grew more impatient.

I wanted to get out of this stage into something more personal.

I thought she invented this sort of stuff to keep me from getting at her errand at Callan's.