"You might care to make a fourth this afternoon, in the card-room."

"I should have been delighted to, but I've got one of these
war-committees at six o'clock." Again he spoke with careful unconcern,
masking a considerable self-satisfaction.




Chapter 10

THE MISSION


The great dim place was full, but crowding had not been permitted.
With a few exceptions in the outlying parts, everybody had a seat.
G.J. was favourably placed for seeing the whole length of the
interior. Accustomed to the restaurants of fashionable hotels,
auction-rooms, theatrical first-nights, the haunts of sport, clubs,
and courts of justice, he soon perceived, from the numerous samples
which he himself was able to identify, that all the London worlds were
fully represented in the multitude--the official world, the political,
the clerical, the legal, the municipal, the military, the artistic,
the literary, the dilettante, the financial, the sporting, and the
world whose sole object in life apparently is to be observed and
recorded at all gatherings to which admittance is gained by privilege
and influence alone.

There were in particular women the names and countenances and
family history of whom were familiar to hundreds of thousands of