Mary was established, high up in Chenevix House. She was amazed at the spaciousness of the rooms, the feeling in them as though the streets were far away. The square was a wonder of waving and tossing green, across which Mary looked from her window and saw other stately old houses like the one she was in. At first she was never tired of admiring the miracle of spring in London. She realised that no country greenness is equal to the glory of the new leaf against the dingy house-fronts, the green freshness about the black stems and boughs and branches.

Lady Agatha was in a perpetual whirl of affairs and gaiety. All her days, and her nights into the small hours, seemed to be filled. At this time Mary had a great deal of her time to herself. In the morning she wrote her Ladyship's letters, and selected from the newspapers such things as her Ladyship ought to read. By-and-by she would be much busier. She was taking lessons in short-hand and type-writing in the afternoons. Her Ladyship would come in only in time to dress for dinner. She had been driving in the park, she had been calling, she had been at a concert, or a matinÉe, or an "At Home." She had been attending this or that meeting. She was never in bed before the summer dawn, yet she would be at the breakfast-table as fresh as a milkmaid, smiling at Mary and telling her this and that bit of news or event of the time since they had met.

Mrs. Morres, who had to accompany her to many places, slept every hour of the day she could. She confessed to Mary in her dry way, that did not ask for pity, that she found her Ladyship's energy superhuman. Sometimes there was an interesting debate in the House of Commons, and Lady Agatha must drop in after dinner to sit for an hour behind the gilded grille. Afterwards she would go on to a political reception. Later to a ball, where she would dance as though there had been nothing in all the long day to tire her.

Once or twice she had a quiet dinner-party, to which Mary came down in her frock of filmy black, which made a delightful setting for her fair paleness. At these dinners she encountered famous men and women, and looked at them from afar off with wistful interest. In the drawing-room afterwards she saw Lady Agatha the centre of a brilliant group. Someone said of her that she was likely to be the spoilt child of politics, since she could be audacious with even the greatest, and move them to speak when no one else could. The great men shook their heads at her and smiled. They warned her that she went too fast for them, that impulsiveness, charming as it was in a woman, was not to be permitted in politics. "If you would but learn diplomacy, my dear lady!" Sir Michael Auberon sighed. But diplomacy seemed likely to be the last thing Lady Agatha Chenevix would learn.

Mary used to sit under Mrs. Morres's wing, and listen, through her witty and wise talk, to the utterances of the great. She felt very shy of these companies of distinguished men and women. Lady Agatha made one or two attempts to draw her closer. Then, perceiving that she was happier in her corner, she let her be.

In her corner Mary listened. She listened with all her ears. Her cheeks would flush and her eyes shine as she listened. There was a younger school of politicians which was well represented at Lady Agatha's parties. Their theories had the generosity of youth. Sir Michael Auberon would listen to them, nodding his head, his fine, beautiful old face lit up with as great a generosity as warmed theirs. He was very fond of his "boys." If he must show them what was impracticable in their views he did it gently. He rallied them with tenderness. He had none of the mockery which is so searing and blighting a thing to hot youth.

One night Mary, looking down the dinner-table, saw a face she remembered. The owner of the face—a tall, loosely-built, plain-looking young man—glanced her way at the moment, and stared—stared and looked away again with a baffled air. Mary knew him at once for the boy she had met seven or eight years before at the Court. He had aged considerably. Men like him have a way of falling into their manhood all at once. His hair was even a little thin on top—with that and his lean, hatchet face he might have been thirty-five.

Afterwards in the drawing-room he was one of those who stood nearest to Sir Michael. Some of the others laughed at him, calling him Don Quixote, and she heard Sir Michael say that the young man's theories were those of the Gironde. "The Revolution devours her own children," he said, with his fine old ironic smile. "And a good many of us have to eat our own professions before we're forty. The great thing would be if we could keep our youthful generosity with the wisdom of our prime."

Looking towards Mary, he caught the flame of enthusiasm in her eyes, and again he smiled. But this time it was a smile without irony, rather an understanding and, one might have said, a grateful smile. All the world knew that Sir Michael's private sorrows were heavy ones, and that he leant the more on the alleviations and consolations his public life brought him.

Afterwards he asked to be introduced to Mary and talked with her for a little while, making her the envy of the room.

"She has a clear mind as well as a sound heart," he said. "She is on fire with the passion for humanity. Take her about with you"—this to Lady Agatha. "Let her see how the people live—what serfs we have under our free banner. There is fine material in her. She should do good work."

Meanwhile Mrs. Morres sat by Mary, doing crochet, with a quiet smile. Her tongue dripped cold water on all the enthusiasms.

"Believe me, my dear, they will do nothing," she said placidly in Mary's ear. That placidity of hers gave her the air of being as relentless as a Fate. "Parties are Tweedledum and Tweedledee. Let Sir Michael get into office and he'll do nothing. Those fine young gentlemen over there will be the office-holders of twenty years to come, the fat sinecurists and pluralists. The people were better off when, like the lower animals, they had no souls. They were protected by their betters. Now they are at war with them and they are more soulless than before. Dear me, how much fine talk I have heard that never came to anything!"

She would go on till the company had departed, and Lady Agatha would come to her side, laughing, and ask her what horrible feudal theories she had been propounding. The two differed on every point but one, and that was in the mere matter of loving each other. Lady Agatha delighted in her cousin's conservatism; and always said she would not have it otherwise if she could. It was a sauce piquante to the dish of their daily lives.

"You shan't lead Mary astray," she would say with pretended indignation. "If she knew the things Sir Michael has been saying about her!"

"My dear Agatha, don't you go leading her astray. Politics are no mÉtier for a woman, or they should be subservient to something else. Go marry, Agatha, and bring children into the world, and when you have reared them you can set up a political salon and theorise about the regeneration of humanity. Let Miss Gray do likewise. You play with these things when you are young—later on you will find them dry bones."

"Dear me!" Lady Agatha said, with admiration. "What a pity she isn't with us, Mary! What a pity she is only a destructive critic! Don't listen to her, child!"

That first evening of their meeting Sir Robin Drummond had come to Mary's side and turned the page of her music while she sang. She had a fresh and sweet voice, although of no great range or compass, and she could sing, without music, song after song of the old English masters, of Arne and Purcell and Bishop, and their delightful school.

"She brings strawberries and cream to town," said someone who was not particularly imaginative.

Mary was conscious of the young man's scrutiny as he turned her pages, and it embarrassed her, but she made no sign.

Afterwards she met Sir Robin many times. He was at this time the adopted candidate for an East-End constituency, and was becoming well known as an advanced politician. He went further than his party, indeed, and somewhat offended even his particular clientÈle by the breadth of his views. He and Lady Agatha were at this time engaged in the work of organising labour, especially amongst the girls and women of the worst-paid and most dangerous trades. It brought them often together amid forlorn habitations and hopeless humanity. One of the difficulties was the question of whether the alien women should be brought in. "They will join the Union and they will go on underselling all the same," said someone. But Sir Robin was of those who held that the alien should have equal rights with her English sister, and that it was possible to teach her to stand on her feet like one of the free-born. He was not chary of his denunciations of certain methods among the Trade Unions and the Trade Unionists, and therefore a crowd sometimes howled him down. But there was always a minority at least to stand by him, and the minority included the industrious and sober, the honest and thinking, among those he desired to help.

By-and-by he fell into a quiet friendliness with Mary Gray. He used to take charge of the ladies when they went into the East End. Lady Agatha used to say that he was a drag on the wheel, because he would not let her do imprudent things, because he would veto it when a question of their going into dangerous streets or houses or rooms, because he insisted on their leaving by a side door a meeting which was becoming turbulent, because he was always forbidding some extravagance or other of her Ladyship's.

"There is one thing about that young man," said Mrs. Morres, who was chary of praise of her Ladyship's party: "he has excellent common-sense, and I thank Heaven for it."

"Ah, yes; he has excellent common-sense," Lady Agatha echoed, with a ruefulness which made Mary laugh suddenly.

"You ought to marry him, my dear," Mrs. Morres went on, looping another stitch of the endless crochet.

"Marry Bob Drummond!" Lady Agatha repeated. "Marry Bob Drummond! Why, it is the last thing in the world I should dream of doing."

One evening, just at the end of the season, someone brought the latest lion to a small reception at Lady Agatha Chenevix's. He was a very modest and retiring lion, a quiet, very bronzed young man, who wore his arm in a sling. He had had his shoulder torn in an encounter with an African leopard. He had fought almost hand to hand with the beast over the body of a Kaffir servant, and had rescued the man at the cost of his own life, it seemed at first, later on of his right arm. It was doubtful whether the strength and vitality of it would ever be restored.

He was not merely a brave man, however, this Mr. Jardine. He had gone to the Gold Coast, and from there into Central Africa, inspired, in the first place, by the desire of knowledge and love of adventure. But, amid the thrilling adventures and hairbreadth escapes, there had grown up in his heart the liveliest interest in and sympathy with the people he found himself amongst. He discovered that they had an ancient civilisation of their own. To be sure, what remained of it hung in shreds and patches on some of them; but there were others, civilised after a fashion, which was not the Western one. He discovered traditions, folk-lore, ancient poetry, laws, a wealth of customs. Understanding the people, he came to love them. They interested him profoundly. He was going back to them as soon as he could.

He stayed after the other guests, and was yet talking eagerly to his hostess when the dressing-bell rang.

"We dine alone," Lady Agatha said to the old friend who had brought Mr. Jardine. "And I go nowhere afterwards: I am fagged out. How glad I am that next week sees us at Hazels! If you and Mr. Jardine could dine, Colonel Brind?"

The old friend answered her wistful look.

"Our lodgings are not far off; we have only to jump into a hansom; we should be back before the dinner-bell rings. Only—this fellow has a host of engagements."

"Ah!"

Lady Agatha had hardly sighed when Jardine woke up as if from a dream.

"Have I engagements?" he asked. "I do not remember any. Anyhow, I am a convalescent, and the privileges of convalescence are mine. I vote for that hansom, Brind."

After dinner they sat around the fire and talked. Although it was June, it had been a sunless day of arid east wind, and Lady Agatha, who always snatched at the least excuse for a fire because it was so beautiful, had ordered one to be lit. The three long windows were open beyond the red leather screen that made a cosy corner of the fireplace, and the scent of flowers came in from the balcony.

Paul Jardine talked as much as they desired him to talk. He started on his hobby about those West African peoples, and rode it with spirit and energy. His friend laughed at him.

"Why, Jardine," he said, "I can never again call you the lion that will not roar."

"Am I horribly loquacious?" The hero smiled, but was not more silent. He had great things to tell, and he told them well and modestly. Lady Agatha sat with her cheek shaded by a peacock-feather fan. There was a deep glow in her eyes. Glancing across at her from the opposite corner, Mary thought it must be the reflection of the firelight.

She came to Mary's room after the guests had departed, when Mary was preparing for bed, and sat down in the chair by the open window.

"What do you think of him, Mary?" she asked.

"Of whom?" Mary said sleepily. They had met a good many people during the day, so the question was a pardonable one.

"Of whom! Why, of Mr. Jardine! Who else could it be?"

She lifted her arms about her head, and the loose white sleeves of her gown fell away from their roundness and softness.

"What a man!" she said, with a long sigh. "What a man! That is life, if you like. How tame the others seem beside him!"

"He roared very gently," said Mary, "but it was very exciting."

"Yes, wasn't it? That sail in the canoe down the river, with the jungle on each side of them alive with wild beasts and venomous reptiles, to say nothing of cannibals, and deadly sicknesses worse than any of those. He said so little about the danger. One got an impression of the extraordinary languorous beauty of the tropical vegetation; one smelt it, that African night, with its enormous moon beyond the mists. There was death on every side of him, in every breath he drew. He found what he went for, the antidote to the bite of the death's-head spider. Henceforth life in those latitudes will be robbed of one of its terrors. What a man!"

"It is a pity that we could not have heard him at the Royal Society," Mary said, with a little yawn—they had been keeping late hours. "If it had been a day or two earlier!"

"But I am going," said Lady Agatha. "Why, Mary, it is only to alter our arrangements by a day. Hazels—the dear place—will keep for a day longer."