slipped, smiling, into a place beside Letty.
"Did you hear that?" he inquired.
"Fontenoy's speech, of course," said the under-secretary, looking round. "She's pitching into Leven, I suppose. He's as cranky and unsound as he can be. Shouldn't wonder if you got him before long."
He nodded good-temperedly to Tressady, then got up to speak to a man on the edge of the further group.
"How amusing!" said George, his satirical eyes still watching Lady Maxwell. "How much that set has 'seen and felt' of sweaters, and white-lead workers, and that ilk! Don't they look like it?"
"Who are they?"
Letty was now using all her eyes to find out, and especially for the purpose of carrying away a mental photograph of Lady Maxwell's black hat and dress.
"Oh! the Maxwells' particular friends in the House—most of them as well provided with family and goods as they make 'em: a philanthropic, idealist lot, that yearns for the people, and will be the first to be kicked downstairs when the people gets its own. However, they aren't all quite happy in their minds. Frank Leven there, as Benson says, is decidedly shaky. He is the member for the Maxwells' division—Maxwell, of course, put him in. He has a house there, I believe, and he married Lady Maxwell's great friend, Miss Macdonald—an ambitious little party, they say, who simply insisted on his going into Parliament. Oh, then, Bennett is there—do you see?—the little dark man with a frock-coat and spectacles? He's Lady Maxwell's link with the Independents—oldest workman member—been in the House a long time, so that by now he isn't quite as one-eyed and one-eared as the rest of them. I suppose she hopes to make use of him at critical moments—she takes care to have tools of all sorts. Gracious—listen!"
There was, indeed, a very storm of discussion sweeping through the rival party. Lady Maxwell's penetrating but not loud voice seemed to pervade it, and her eyes and face, as she glanced from one speaker to another, drew alternately the shafts and the sympathy of the rest.
Tressady made a face.
"I say, Letty, promise me one thing!" His hand stole towards hers. Tully discreetly looked the other way. "Promise me not to be a political woman, there's a dear!"
Letty hastily withdrew her fingers, having no mind at all for caresses in public.
"But I must be a political woman—I shall have to be! I know heaps of girls and married women who get up everything in the papers—all the stupidest things—not because they know anything about it, or because they care a rap, but because some of their men friends happen to be members; and when they come to see you, you must know what to talk to them about."
"Must you?" said George, "How odd! As though one went to tea with a woman for the sake of talking about the very same things you have been doing all day, and are probably sick to death of already."
"Never mind," said Letty, with her little air of sharp wisdom. "I know they do it, and I shall have to do it too. I shall pick it up."
"Will you? Of course you will! Only, when I've got a big Bill on, let me do a little of it for myself—give me some of the credit!"
Letty laughed maliciously.
"I don't know why you've taken such a dislike to her," she said, but in rather a contented tone, as her eye once more travelled across to Lady Maxwell. "Does she trample on her husband, after all?"
Tressady gave an impatient shrug.
"Trample on him? Goodness, no! That's all part of the play, too—wifely affection and the rest of it. Why can't she keep out of sight a little? We don't want the women meddling."
"Thank you, my domestic tyrant!" said Letty, making him a little bow.
"How much tyranny will you want before you accept those sentiments?" he asked her, smiling tenderly into her eyes. Both had a moment's pleasant thrill; then George sprang up.
"Ah, here they are at last!—the General, and all the lot. Now, I hope, we shall get some dinner."
Tressady had, of course, to introduce his elderly cousins and his three or four political friends to his future wife; and, amid the small flutter of the performance, the break-up and disappearance of the rival party passed unnoticed. When Tressady's guests entered the dining-room which looks on the terrace, and made their way to the top table reserved for them, the Leven dinner, near the door, was already half through.
George's little banquet passed merrily enough. The grey-haired General and his wife turned out to be agreeable and well-bred people, quite able to repay George's hospitality by the dropping of little compliments on the subject of Letty into his half-yielded ear. For his way of taking such things was always a trifle cynical. He believed that people say habitually twice what they mean, whether in praise or blame; and he did not feel that his own view of Letty was much affected by what other people thought of her.
So, at least, he would have said. In reality, he got a good deal of pleasure out of his fiancée's success. Letty, indeed, was enjoying herself greatly. This political world, as she had expected, satisfied her instinct for social importance better than any world she had yet known. She was determined to get on in it; nor, apparently, was there likely to be any difficulty in the matter. George's friends thought her a pretty, lively creature, and showed the usual inclination of the male sex to linger in her society. She mostly wanted to be informed as to the House and its ways. It was all so new to her!—she said. But her ignorance was not insipid; her questions had flavour. There was much talk and laughter; Letty felt herself the mistress of the table, and her social ambitions swelled within her.
Suddenly George's attention was recalled to the Maxwell table by the break-up of the group around it. He saw Lady Maxwell rise and look round her as though in search of someone. Her eyes fell upon him, and he involuntarily rose at the same instant to meet the step she made towards him.
"I must say another word of thanks to you"—she held out her hand. "That girl and her grandmother were most grateful to you."
"Ah, well!—I must come and make my report. Sunday, I think you said?"
She assented. Then her expression altered:
"When do you speak?"
The question fell out abruptly, and took George by surprise.
"I? On Monday, I believe, if I get my turn. But I fear the British Empire will go on if I don't!"
She threw a glance of scrutiny at his thin, whimsical face, with its fair moustache and sunburnt skin.
"I hear you are a good speaker," she said simply. "And you are entirely with Lord Fontenoy?"
He bowed lightly, his hands on his sides.
"You'll agree our case was well put? The worst of it—"
Then he stopped. He saw that Lady Maxwell had ceased to listen to him. She turned her head towards the door, and, without even saying good-bye to him, she hurried away from him towards the further end of the room.
"Maxwell, I see!" said Tressady to himself, with a shrug, as he returned to his seat. "Not flattering—but rather pretty, all the same!"
He was thinking of the quick change that had remade the face while he was talking to her—a change as lovely as it was unconscious.
