Mary has been trying to rid herself of fiancé Tony but he just cannot take the hint. This is the problem with being with someone who loves you in a cold and unfeeling way; you never truly know when it's over. Of course, it doesn't make it any easier when the man you keep trying to dump keeps getting invited to stay for house party weekends at your manor to see the very large elephant on exhibit in the room. Lord Tiger cannot understand why others get married and married and married and he and potential serial killer Mabel Lane Fox never get carried away. She suggests that if only he'd stop howling at the moonlight, maybe they'd stand a chance. For his part, Lord Tiger does seem to have moved from anger to acceptance, but insists he cannot break it off with Mary, as much as he wants too, and he is too honorable to say why (hint, hint). Now that they've done the deed (oops, did he say that?), only Mary can end it (the fact that she already did seems to have escaped him) and he is not convinced she meant it anyway. With the Aldridges at Downton to dine, anti-Semitism is only alluded to in a genteel sort of way. We don't actually get a taste of what they are up against until Lord Merton's boys make an appearance the following evening. For now, there are merely hints about the county having to get used to them. It is 1924 and the world is a more segregated place so it is pretty certain the neighbors had issues when Jews moved into their midst - especially successful ones. In that same era, 1923, my grandparents left the city (Philly), to move to the suburbs. Their three bedroom house was hardly a grand estate. Yet some of their lovely, new neighbors started a petition in an attempt to force them out. In the land whose most celebrated playwright gave us Shylock, there is a long, bloody history of anti-Semitism as well. And speaking of plain sailing ... Robert and Cora are back to loving each other and speaking in hieroglyphic valentines, with nary a word about the whole Bricker Incident. Lord Labrador attributes it to the old girl not having been herself for a few weeks, but now she's perked up and it's forgotten about. The only remnant is a ban on orange marmalade at breakfast. It would have been interesting to see a follow-up to that dressing room scene, where we see Cora and Robert have a talk that peels back the layers of their relationship.
