CHAPTER V.

THE OLYMPIANS THUNDER.


I.

Lady Durwent was blessed in the possession of a cook whose artistry was
beyond question, if the same could not be said of the guests to whom
she so frequently ministered. She was a descendant of the French, that
race which makes everything tend towards development of the soul, and
consequently looks upon a meal as something of a sacrament. She
prepared a dinner with a balance of contrast and climax that a composer
might show in writing a tone poem.

On this eventful evening, therefore, the dinner-party, stimulated by
her art and by potent wines (gazing with long-necked dignity at the
autocratic whisky-decanter), rapidly assumed a crescendo and an
accelerando--the two things for which a hostess listens.

H. Stackton Dunckley had held the resolutionist in a duel of
language--a combat with broadswords--and honours were fairly even. The
short-sleeved Johnston Smyth had waged futurist warfare against the
modernist Pyford, while the Honourable Miss Durwent sat helplessly
between them, with as little chance of asserting her rights as the
Dormouse at the Mad Hatter's tea-party. The American had held his own
in badinage with the daughter of Italy on one side and his hostess on