I wasn't thinking about money, and that kind of thing. Well, give me time, mother—don't hurry me! And now I'd better stop talking nonsense, change my clothes, and be off. Good-bye, dear—you shall hear when the job's perpetrated!"
"William, really!—don't say these things—at least to anybody but me. You understand very well"—she drew herself up rather finely—"that if I hadn't known, in spite of your apparent idleness, you would do any work they set you to do, to your own credit and the country's, I'd never have lifted a finger for you!"
William Ashe laughed out.
"Oh! intriguing mother!" he said, stooping again to kiss her. "So you admit you did it?"
He went off gayly, and she heard him flying up-stairs three steps at a time, as though he were still an untamed Eton boy, and there were no three weeks' hard political fighting behind him, and no interview which might decide his life before him.
He entered his own sitting-room on the second floor, shut the door behind him, and glanced round him with delight. It was a large room looking on a side street, and obliquely to the park. Its walls were covered with books—books which almost at first sight betrayed to the accustomed eye that they were the familiar companions of a student. Almost every volume had long paper slips inside it, and when opened would have been found to contain notes and underlinings in a somewhat reckless and destructive abundance. A large table, also loaded untidily with books and papers, stood in the centre of the room; many of them were note-books, stored with evidences of the most laborious and patient work; a Cambridge text lay beside them face downward, as he had left it on departure. His mother's housekeeper, who had been one of his best friends from babyhood, was the only person allowed to dust his room—but on the strict condition that she replaced everything as she found it.
He took up the volume, and plunged a moment headlong into the Greek chorus that met his eye. "Jolly!" he said, putting it down with a sigh of regret. "These beastly politics!"
And he went muttering to his dressing-room, summoning his valet almost with ill-temper. Yet half his library was the library of a politician, admirably chosen and exhaustively read.
The footman who answered his call understood his moods and served him at a look. Ashe complained hotly of the brushing of his dress-clothes, and worked himself into a fever over the set of his tie. Nevertheless, before he left he had managed to get from the young man the whole story of his engagement to the under-housemaid, giving him thereupon some bits of advice, jocular but trenchant, which James accepted with a readiness quite unlike his normal behavior in the circles of his class.
II
Ashe took his seat, dined, and saw the Prime Minister. These things took time, and it was not till past eleven that he presented himself in the hall of Madame d'Estrées' house in St. James's Place. Most of her guests were already gathered, but he mounted the stairs together with an old friend and an old acquaintance, Philip Darrell, one of the ablest writers of the moment, and Louis Harman, artist and man of fashion, the friend of duchesses and painter of portraits, a person much in request in many worlds.
"What a cachet they have, these houses!" said Harman, looking round him. "St. James's Place is the top!"
"Where else would you expect to find Madame d'Estrées?" asked Darrell, smiling.
"Yes—what taste she has! However, it was I really who advised her to take the house."
"Naturally," said Darrell.
Harman threw a dubious look at him, then stopped a moment, and with a complacent proprietary air straightened an engraving on the staircase wall.
"I suppose the dear lady has a hundred slaves of the lamp, as usual," said Ashe. "You advise her about her house—somebody else helps her to buy her wine—"
"Not at all, my dear fellow," said Harman, offended—"as if I couldn't do that!"
"Hullo!" said Darrell, as they neared the drawing-room door. "What a crowd there is!"
For as the butler announced them, the din of talk which burst through the door implied indeed a multitude—much at their ease.
They made their way in with difficulty, shaping their course towards that corner in the room where they knew they should find their hostess. Ashe was greeted on all sides with friendly words and congratulations, and a passage was opened for him to the famous "blue sofa" where Madame d'Estrées sat enthroned.
She looked up with animation, broke off her talk with two elderly diplomats who seemed to have taken possession of her, and beckoned Ashe to a seat beside her.
"So you're in? Was it a hard fight?"
"A hard fight? Oh no! One would have had to be a great fool not to get in."
"They say you spoke very well. I suppose you promised them everything they wanted—from the crown downward?"
"Yes—all the usual harmless things," said Ashe.
Madame d'Estrées laughed; then looked at him across the top of her fan.
"Well!—and what else?"
"You can't wait for your newspaper?" he said, smiling, after a moment's pause.
She shrugged her shoulders good-humoredly.
"Oh! I know—of course I know. Is it as good as you expected?"
"As good as—" The young man opened his mouth in wonder. "What right had I to expect anything?"
"How modest! All the same, they want you—and they're very glad to get you. But you can't save them."
"That's not generally expected of Under-Secretaries, is it?"
"A good deal's expected of you. I talked to Lord Parham about you last night."
William Ashe flushed a little.
"Did you? Very kind of you."
"Not at all. I didn't flatter you in the least. Nor did he. But they're going to give you your chance!"
She bent forward and lightly patted the sleeve of his coat with the fingers of a very delicate hand. In this sympathetic aspect, Madame d'Estrées was no doubt exceedingly attractive. There were, of course, many people who were not moved by it; to whom it was the conjuring of an arch pretender. But these were generally of the female sex. Men, at any rate, lent themselves to the illusion. Ashe, certainly, had always done so. And to-night the spell still worked; though as her action drew his particular attention to her face and expression, he was aware of slight changes in her which recalled his mother's words of the afternoon. The eyes were tired; at last he perceived in them some slight signs of years and harass. Up till now her dominating charm had been a kind of timeless softness and sensuousness, which breathed from her whole personality—from her fair skin and hair, her large, smiling eyes. She put, as it were, the question of age aside. It was difficult to think of her as a child; it had been impossible to imagine her as an old woman.
"Well, this is all very
