Lady Coryston and her daughter had made a rapid and silent meal. Marcia noticed that her mother was unusually pale, and attributed it partly to the fatigue and bad air of the House of Commons, partly to the doings of her eldest brother. What were they all going to meet for after dinner—her mother, her three brothers, and herself? They had each received a formal summons. Their mother "wished to speak to them on important business." So Arthur—evidently puzzled—had paired for the evening, and would return from the House at nine-thirty; James had written to say he would come, and Coryston had wired an hour before dinner—"Inconvenient, but will turn up."

What was it all about? Some business matter clearly. Marcia knew very well that the family circumstances were abnormal. Mothers in Lady Coryston's position, when their husbands expire, generally retire to a dower-house, on a jointure; leaving their former splendors—the family mansion and the family income—behind them. They step down from their pedestal, and efface themselves; their son becomes the head of the family, and the daughter-in-law reigns in place of the wife. Nobody for many years past could ever have expected Lady Coryston to step down from anything. Although she had brought but a very modest dowry, such from earliest days had been the strength and dominance of her character, that her divine right of rule in the family had never been seriously questioned by any of her children except Coryston; although James, who had inherited money from his grandmother, was entirely independent of her, and by the help of a detached and humorous mind could often make his mother feel the stings of criticism, when others were powerless. And as for Coryston, who had become a quasi-Socialist at Cambridge, and had ever since refused to suit his opinions in the slightest degree to his mother's, his long absences abroad after taking his degree had for some years reduced the personal friction between them; and it was only since his father's death, which had occurred while he himself was in Japan, and since the terms of his father's will had been known, that Coryston had become openly and angrily hostile.

Why should Coryston, a gentleman who denounced property, and was all for taxing land and landlords into the Bankruptcy Court, resent so bitterly his temporary exclusion from the family estates? Marcia could not see that there was any logical answer. If landlordism was the curse of England, why be angry that you were not asked to be a landlord?

And really—of late—his behavior! Never coming to see his mother—writing the most outrageous things in support of the Government—speaking for Radical candidates in their very own county—denouncing by name some of their relations and old family friends: he had really been impossible!

Meanwhile Lady Coryston gave her daughter no light on the situation. She went silently up-stairs, followed by Marcia. The girl, a slight figure in white, mounted unwillingly. The big, gloomy house oppressed her as she passed through it. The classical staircase with its stone-colored paint and its niches holding bronze urns had always appeared to her since her childhood as the very top of dreariness; and she particularly disliked the equestrian portrait of her great-grandfather by an early Victorian artist, which fronted her as she ascended, in the gallery at the top of the staircase, all the more that she had been supposed from her childhood to be like the portrait. Brought up as she had been in the belief that family and heredity are the master forces of life, she resented this teasing association with the weak, silly fellow on the ill-balanced rocking-horse whose double chin, button nose, and receding forehead not even the evident flattery of the artist had been able to disguise. Her hatred of the picture often led her to make a half-protesting pause in front of the long Chippendale mirror which hung close to it. She made it to-night.

Indeed, the dim reflection in the glass might well have reassured her. Dark eyes and hair, a brunette complexion, grace, health, physical strength—she certainly owed none of these qualities or possessions to her ancestor. The face reminded one of ripe fruit—so rich was the downy bloom on the delicate cheeks, so vivid the hazel of the wide black-fringed eyes. A touch of something heavy and undecided in the lower part of the face made it perhaps less than beautiful. But any man who fell in love with her would see in this defect only the hesitancy of first youth, with its brooding prophecy of passion, of things dormant and powerful. Face and form were rich—quite unconsciously—in that magic of sex which belongs to only a minority of women, but that, a minority drawn from all ranks and occupations. Marcia Coryston believed herself to be interested in many things—in books, in the Suffrage, in the girls' debating society of which she was the secretary, in politics, and in modern poetry. In reality her whole being hung like some chained Andromeda at the edge of the sea of life, expecting Perseus. Her heart listened for him perpetually—the unknown!—yearning for his call, his command....

There were many people—witness Sir Wilfrid Bury's remark to her mother—who had already felt this magic in her. Without any conscious effort of her own she had found herself possessed, in the course of three seasons since her coming out, of a remarkable place in her own circle and set. She was surrounded by a court of young people, men and women; she received without effort all the most coveted invitations; she was watched, copied, talked about; and rumor declared that she had already refused—or made her mother refuse for her—one or more of the men whom all other mothers desired to capture. This quasi-celebrity had been achieved no one quite knew how, least of all Marcia herself. It had not, apparently, turned her head, though those who knew her best were aware of a vein of natural arrogance in her character. But in manner she remained nonchalant and dreamy as before, with just those occasional leaps to the surface of passionate, or scornful, or chivalrous feeling which made her interesting. Her devotion to her mother was plain. She espoused all her mother's opinions with vehemence, and would defend her actions, in the family or out of it, through thick and thin. But there were those who wondered how long the subservience would last, supposing the girl's marriage were delayed.

As to the gossip repeated by Sir Wilfrid Bury, it referred to the latest of Marcia's adventures. Her thoughts played with the matter, especially with certain incidents of the Shrewsbury House ball, as she walked slowly into the drawing-room in her mother's wake.

The drawing-room seemed to her dark and airless. Taste was not the Coryston strong point, and this high, oblong room was covered with large Italian pictures, some good, some indifferent, heavily framed, and hung on wine-colored damask. A feebly false Guido Reni, "The Sacrifice of Isaac," held the center of one wall, making vehement claim to be just as well worth looking at as the famous Titian opposite. The Guido had hung there since 1820, and what was good enough for the Corystons of that date was good enough for their descendants, who were not going to admit that their ancestors were now discredited—laughed out of court—as collectors, owing to the labors of a few middle-aged intellectuals. The floor was held by a number of gilt chairs and sofas covered also in wine-colored damask, or by tables holding objets d'art of the same mixed quality as the pictures. Even the flowers, the stands of splendid azaleas and early roses with which the room was lavishly adorned, hardly produced an impression of beauty. Marcia, looking slowly round her with critical eyes, thought suddenly of a bare room she knew in a Roman palace, some faded hangings in dull gold upon the walls, spaces of light and shadow on the empty matted floor, and a great branch of Judas tree in blossom lighting up a corner. The memory provoked in her a thrill of sensuous pleasure.

Meanwhile Lady Coryston was walking slowly up and down, her hands behind her. She looked very thin and abnormally tall; and Marcia saw her profile, sharply white, against the darkness of the wall. A vague alarm struck through the daughter's mind. What was her mother about to say or do? Till now Marcia had rather lazily assumed that the meeting would concern some matter of family property—some selling or buying transaction—which a mother, even in the abnormally independent position Lady Coryston, might well desire to communicate to her children. There had been a family meeting in the preceding year when the Dorsetshire property had been sold under a recent Act of Parliament. Coryston wouldn't come. "I take no interest in the estates "—he had written to his mother. "They're your responsibility, not mine."

And yet of course Coryston would inherit some day. That was taken for granted among them. What were Tory principles worth if they did not some time, at some stage, secure an eldest son, and an orthodox succession? Corry was still in the position of heir, when he should normally have become owner. It was very trying for him, no doubt. But exceptional women make exceptional circumstances. And they were all agreed that their mother was an exceptional woman.

But whatever the business, they would hardly get through without a scene, and during the past week there had been a number of mysterious interviews with lawyers going on.... What was it all about? To distract her thoughts she struck up conversation.

"Did you see Enid Glenwilliam, mother, in Palace Yard?"

"I just noticed her," said Lady Coryston, indifferently. "One can't help it, she dresses so outrageously."

"Oh, mother, she dresses very well! Of course nobody else could wear that kind of thing."

Lady Coryston lifted her eyebrows.

"That's where the ill-breeding comes in—that a young girl should make herself so conspicuous."

"Well, it seems to pay," laughed Marcia. "She has tremendous success. People on our side—people you'd never think—will do anything to get her for their parties. They say she makes things go. She doesn't care what she says."

"That I can quite believe! Yes—I saw she was at Shrewsbury House the other day—dining—when the Royalties were there. The daughter of that man!"

Lady Coryston's left foot gave a sharp push to a footstool lying in her path, as though it were Glenwilliam himself.

Marcia laughed.

"And she's very devoted to him, too. She told some one who told me, that he was so much more interesting than any other man she knew, that she hadn't the least wish to marry! I suppose you wouldn't like it if I were to make a friend of her?" The girl's tone had a certain slight defiance in it.

"Do what you like when I'm gone, my dear," said Lady Coryston, quietly.

Marcia flushed, and would have replied, but for the sudden and distant sound of the hall-door bell. Lady Coryston instantly stopped her pacing and took her seat beside a table on which, as Marcia now noticed, certain large envelopes had been laid. The girl threw herself into a low chair behind her mother, conscious of a distress, a fear, she could not analyze. There was a small fire in the grate, for the May evening was chilly, but on the other side of the room a window was open to the twilight, and in a luminous sky cut by the black boughs of a plane tree, and the roofs of a tall building, Marcia saw a bright star shining. The heavy drawing-room, with its gilt furniture and its electric lights, seemed for a moment blotted out. That patch of sky suggested strange, alien, inexorable things; while all the time the sound of mounting footsteps on the stairs grew nearer.

In they came, her three brothers, laughing and talking. Coryston first, then James, then Arthur. Lady Coryston rose to meet them, and they all kissed their mother. Then Coryston, with his hands on his sides, stood in front of her, examining her face with hard, amused eyes, as much as to say, "Now, then, for the scene. Let's get it over!" He was the only one of the three men who was not in evening dress. He wore, indeed, a shabby greenish-gray suit, and a flannel shirt. Marcia noticed it with indignation. "It's not respectful to mother!" she thought, angrily. "It's all very well to be a Socialist and a Bohemian. But there are decencies!"

In spite, however, of the shabby suit and the flannel shirt, in spite also of the fact that he was short and very slight, while his brothers were both of them over six feet and broadly built men, there could be no doubt that, as soon as he entered, Coryston held the stage. He was one of the mercurial men who exist in order to keep the human tide in movement. Their opinions matter principally because without them the opinions of other men would not exist. Their function is to provoke. And from the time he was a babe in the nursery Coryston had fulfilled it to perfection.

He himself would have told you he was simply the reaction from his mother. And indeed, although from the time he had achieved trousers their joint lives had been one scene of combat, they were no sooner in presence of each other than the strange links between them made themselves felt no less than the irreconcilable differences.

Now, indeed, as, after a few bantering remarks to his mother on his recent political escapades—remarks which she took in complete silence—he settled himself in a high chair in front of her to listen to what she had to say, no subtle observer of the scene but must have perceived the likeness—through all contrast—between mother and son. Lady Coryston was tall, large-boned, thin to emaciation, imposing—a Lady Macbeth of the drawing-room. Coryston was small, delicately finished, a whimsical snippet of a man—on wires—never at ease—the piled fair hair overbalancing the face and the small, sarcastic chin. And yet the essential note of both physiognomies, of both aspects, was the same. Will—carried to extremes, absorbing and swallowing up the rest of the personality. Lady Coryston had handed on the disease of her own character to her son, and it was in virtue of what she had given him that she had made him her enemy.

Her agitation in his presence, in spite of her proud bearing, was indeed evident, at least to Marcia. Marcia read her; had indeed been compelled to read her mother—the movements of hand and brow, the tricks of expression—from childhood up. And she detected, from various signs of nervousness, that Lady Coryston expected a rough time.

She led the way to it, however, with deliberation. She took no notice of Coryston's, "Well, mother, what's up? Somebody to be tried and executed?" but, waving to him to take a particular chair, she asked the others to sit, and placed herself beside the table which held the sheets of folded foolscap. The ugly electric light from overhead fell full upon the pallid oval of her face, on her lace cap, and shimmering black dress. Only Marcia noticed that the hand which took up the foolscap shook a little. It was an old hand, delicately white, with large finger-joints.

"I can't pretend to make a jest of what I'm going to say," she said, with a look at Coryston. "I wanted to speak to you all on a matter of business—not very agreeable business, but necessary. I am sure you will hear me out, and believe that I am doing my best, according to my lights, by the family—the estates—and the country."

At the last slowly spoken words Lady Coryston drew herself up. Especially when she said "the country," it was as though she mentioned something peculiarly her own, something attacked which fled to her for protection.

Marcia looked round on her three brothers: Coryston sunk in a big gilt chair, one leg cocked over the other, his fingers lightly crossed above his head; James with his open brow, his snub nose, his charming expression; and Arthur, who had coaxed Lady Coryston's spaniel on to his lap and was pulling his ears. He looked, she thought, bored and only half attentive. And yet she was tolerably certain that he knew no more than she did what Was going to happen.

"I am quite aware," said Lady Coryston, resuming after a pause, "that in leaving his estates and the bulk of his fortune to myself your dear father did an unusual thing, and one for which many persons have blamed him—"

Coryston's cocked leg descended abruptly to the ground. Marcia turned an anxious eye upon him; but nothing more happened, and the voice speaking went on:

"He did it, as I believe you have all recognized, because he desired that in these difficult times, when everything is being called in question, and all our institutions, together with the ideas which support them, are in danger, I should, during my lifetime, continue to support and carry out his ideas—the ideas he and I had held in common—and should remain the guardian of all those customs and traditions on his estates which he had inherited—and in which he believed—"

Coryston suddenly sat up, shook down his coat vehemently, and putting his elbows on his knees, propped his face on them, the better to observe his mother. James was fingering his watch-chain, with downcast eyes, the slightest smile on his gently twitching mouth; Arthur was measuring one ear of the spaniel against the other.

"Two years," said Lady Coryston, "have now passed since your father's death. I have done my best with my trust, though of course I realize that I cannot have satisfied all my children." She paused a moment. "I have not wasted any of your father's money in personal luxury—that none of you can say. The old establishment, the old ways, have been kept up—nothing more. And I have certainly wished"—she laid a heavy emphasis on the word—"to act for the good of all of you. You, James, have your own fortune, but I think you know that if you had wanted money at any time, for any reasonable purpose, you had only to ask for it. Marcia also has her own money; but when it comes to her marriage, I desire nothing better than to provide for her amply. And now, as to Coryston—"

She turned to him, facing him magnificently, though not, as Marcia was certain, without trepidation. Coryston flung back his head with a laugh.

"Ah, now we come to it!" he said. "The rest was all 'but leather and prunella.'"

James murmured, "Corry—old man?" Marcia flushed angrily.

"Coryston also knows very well," said Lady Coryston, coldly, "that everything he could possibly have claimed—"

"Short of the estates—which were my right," put in Coryston, quietly, with an amused look.

His mother went on without noticing the interruption:

"—would have been his—either now or in due time—if he would only have made certain concessions—"

"Sold my soul and held my tongue?—quite right!" said Coryston. "I have scores of your letters, my dear mother, to that effect."

Lady Coryston slightly raised her voice, and for the first time it betrayed emotion.

"If he would, in simple decent respect to his father's memory and consideration of his mother's feelings, have refrained from attacking his father's convictions—"

"What!—you think he still has them—in the upper regions?"

Coryston flung an audacious hand toward the ceiling. Lady Coryston grew pale. Marcia looked fiercely at her brother, and, coming to her mother's side, she took her hand.

"Your brothers and sister, Coryston, will not allow you, I think, to insult your father's memory!" The voice audibly shook.

Coryston sprang up impetuously and came to stand over his mother, his hands on his sides.

"Now look here, mother. Let's come to business. You've been plotting something more against me, and I want to know what it is. Have you been dishing me altogether?—cutting me finally out of the estates? Is that what you mean? Let's have it!"

Lady Coryston's face stiffened anew into a gray obstinacy.

"I prefer, Coryston, to tell my story in my own words and in my own way—"

"Yes—but please tell it!" said Coryston, sharply. "Is it fair to keep us on tenter-hooks? What is that paper, for instance? Extracts, I guess, from your will—which concern me—and the rest of them"—he waved his hand toward the other three. "For God's sake let's have them, and get done with it."

"I will read them, if you will sit down, Coryston."

With a whimsical shake of the head Coryston returned to his chair. Lady Coryston took up the folded paper.

"Coryston guessed rightly. These are the passages from my will which concern the estates. I should like to have explained before reading them, in a way as considerate to my eldest son as possible" she looked steadily at Coryston—"the reasons which have led me to take this course. But—"

"No, no! Business first and pleasure afterward!" interrupted the eldest son. "Disinherit me and then pitch into me. You get at me unfairly while I'm speculating as to what's coming."

"I think," said Marcia, in a tone trembling with indignation, "that Coryston is behaving abominably."

But her brothers did not respond, and Coryston looked at his sister with lifted brows. "Go it, Marcia!" he said, indulgently.

Lady Coryston began to read.

Before she had come to the end of her first paragraph Coryston was pacing the drawing-room, twisting his lips into all sorts of shapes, as was his custom when the brain was active. And with the beginning of the second, Arthur sprang to his feet.

"I say, mother!"

"Let me finish?" asked Lady Coryston with a hard patience.

She read to the end of the paper. And with the last words Arthur broke out:

"I won't have it, mother! It's not fair on Corry. It's beastly unfair!"

Lady Coryston made no reply. She sat quietly staring into Arthur's face, her hands, on which the rings sparkled, lightly clasped over the paper which lay upon her knee. James's expression was one of distress. Marcia sat dumfoundered.

James approached his mother.

"I think, mother, you will hardly maintain these provisions."

She turned toward him.

"Yes, James, I shall maintain them."

Meanwhile Arthur, deeply flushed, stood running his hand through his fair hair as though in bewilderment.

"I sha'n't take it, mother! I give you full warning. Whenever it comes to me I shall hand it back to Corry."

"It won't come to you, except as a life interest. The estates will be in trust," said Lady Coryston.

Coryston gave a loud, sudden laugh, and stood looking at his mother from a little distance.

"How long have you been concocting this, mother? I suppose my last speeches have contributed?"

"They have made me finally certain that your father could never have intrusted you with the estates."

"How do you know? He meant me to have the property if I survived you. The letter which he left for me said as much."

"He gave me absolute discretion," said Lady Coryston, firmly.

"At least you have taken it!" said Coryston, with emphasis. "Now let's see how things stand."

He paused, a thin, wiry figure, under the electric light, checking off the items on his fingers. "On the ground of my political opinion—you cut me out of the succession. Arthur is to have the estates. And you propose to buy me off by an immediate gift of seven thousand a year in addition to my present fortune—the whole income from the land and the tin-mines being, I understand, about ten times that; and you intend to sell certain outlying properties in order to do this. That's your proposal. Well, now, here's mine. I won't take your seven thousand a year! I will have all—all, that is, which would have normally come to me—or nothing!"

He stood gazing intently at his mother's face, his small features sparkling.

"I will have all—or nothing!" he repeated. "Of course I don't deny it for a moment, if the property had come to me I should have made all sorts of risky experiments with it. I should have cut it up into small holdings. I should have pulled down the house or made it into a county hospital."

"You make it your business to wound, Coryston."

"No, I simply tell you what I should have done. And I should have been absolutely in my right!" He brought his hand down with passion on the chair beside him. "My father had his way. In justice I—the next generation—ought to have mine. These lands were not yours. You have no moral rights over them whatever. They come from my father, and his father. There is always something to be said for property, so long as each generation is free to make its own experiments upon it. But if property is to be locked in the dead hand, so that the living can't get at it, then it is what the Frenchman called it, theft!—or worse.... Well, I'm not going to take this quietly, I warn you. I refuse the seven thousand a year! and if I can't possess the property—well!—I'm going to a large extent to manage it!"

Lady Coryston started.

"Cony!" cried Marcia, passionately.

"I have a responsibility toward my father's property," said Coryston, calmly. "And I intend to settle down upon it, and try and drum a few sound ideas into the minds of our farmers and laborers. Owing to my absurd title I can't stand for our parliamentary division—but I shall look out for somebody who suits me, and run him. You'll find me a nuisance, mother, I'm afraid. But you've done your best for your principles. Don't quarrel with me if I do the best for mine. Of course I know it's hard for you. You would always have liked to manage me. But I never could be managed—least of all by a woman."

Lady Coryston rose from her seat.

"James!—Arthur!—" The voice had regained all its strength. "You will understand, I think, that it is better for me to leave you. I do not wish that either Coryston or I should say things we should afterward find it hard to forgive. I had a public duty to do. I have performed it. Try and understand me. Good night."

"You will let me come and see you to-morrow?" said James, anxiously.

She made no reply. Then James and Arthur kissed her, Marcia threw an arm round her and went with her, the girl's troubled, indignant eyes holding Coryston at bay the while.

As Lady Coryston approached the door her eldest son made a sudden rush and opened it for her.

"Good night, mother. We'll play a great game, you and I—but we'll play fair."

Lady Coryston swept past him without a word. The door closed on her and Marcia. Then Coryston turned, laughing, to his brother Arthur, and punched him in the ribs.

"I say, Arthur, old boy, you talked a jolly lot of nonsense this afternoon! I slipped into the Gallery a little to hear you."

Arthur grew red.

"Of course it was nonsense to you!"

"What did Miss Glenwilliam say to you?"

"Nothing that matters to you, Corry."

"Arthur, my son, you'll be in trouble, too, before you know where you are!"

"Do hold your tongue, Corry!"

"Why should I? I back you strongly. But you'll have to stick to her. Mother will fight you for all she's worth."

"I'm no more to be managed than you, if it comes to that."

"Aren't you? You're the darling, at present. I don't grudge you the estates, Arthur."

"I never lifted a finger to get them," said Arthur, moodily. "And I shall find a way of getting out of them—the greater part of them, anyway. All the same, Corry, if I do—you'll have to give guarantees."

"Don't you wish you may get them! Well now"—Coryston gave a great stretch—"can't we have a drink? You're the master here, Arthur. Just order it. James, did you open your mouth while mother was here? I don't remember. You looked unutterable things. But nobody could be as wise as you look. I tell you, though you are a philosopher and a man of peace, you'll have to take sides in this family row, whether you like it or not. Ah! Here's the whisky. Give us a cigar. Now then, we'll sit on this precious paper!"

He took up the roll his mother had left behind her and was soon sipping and puffing in the highest good humor, while he parodied and mocked at the legal phraseology of the document which had just stripped him of seventy thousand a year.

Half an hour later the brothers had dispersed, Coryston and James to their bachelor quarters, Arthur to the House of Commons. The front door was no sooner shut than a slender figure in white emerged from the shadows of the landing overhead. It was Marcia, carrying a book.

She came to the balustrade and looked over into the hall below. Nothing to be heard or seen. Her brothers, she perceived, had not left the house from the drawing-room. They must have adjourned to the library, the large ground-floor room at the back.

"Then Mr. Lester knows," she thought, indignantly. "Just like Corry!" And her pride revolted against the notion of her brothers discussing her mother's actions, her mother's decisions, with this stranger in the house. It was quite true that Mr. Lester had been a friend both of Arthur and of Coryston at Oxford, and that Arthur in particular was devoted to him. But that did not excuse the indiscretion, the disloyalty, of bringing him into the family counsels at such a juncture. Should she go down? She was certain she would never get to sleep after these excitements, and she wanted the second volume of Diana of the Crossways. Why not? It was only just eleven. None of the lights had yet been put out. Probably Mr. Lester had gone to bed.

She ran down lightly, and along the passage leading to the library. As she opened the door, what had been light just before became suddenly darkness, and she heard some one moving about.

"Who is that?" said a voice. "Wait a moment."

A little fumbling; and then a powerful reading-lamp, standing on a desk heaped with books midway down the large room, was relit. The light flashed toward the figure at the door.

"Miss Coryston! I beg your pardon! I was just knocking off work. Can I do anything for you?"

The young librarian came toward her. In the illumination from the passage behind her she saw his dark Cornish face, its red-brown color, broad brow, and blue eyes.

"I came for a book," said Marcia, rather hurriedly, as she entered. "I know where to find it. Please don't trouble." She went to the shelves, found her volume, and turned abruptly. The temptation which possessed her proved too strong.

"I suppose my brothers have been here?"

Lester's pleasant face showed a certain embarrassment.

"They have only just gone—at least, Arthur and Lord Coryston. James went some time ago."

Marcia threw her head back defiantly against the latticed bookcase.

"I suppose Corry has been attacking my mother?"

Lester hesitated; then spoke with grave sincerity: "I assure you, he did nothing of the kind. I should not have let him." He smiled.

"But they've told you—he and Arthur—they've told you what's happened?"

"Yes," he said, reluctantly. "I tried to stop them."

"As if anything could stop Corry!" cried Marcia—"when he wants to do something he knows he oughtn't to do. And he's told you his precious plan?—of coming to settle down at Coryston—in our very pockets—in order to make mother's life a burden to her?"

"A perfectly mad whim!" said Lester, smiling again. "I don't believe he'll do it."

"Oh yes, he will," said Marcia; "he'll do anything that suits his ideas. He calls it following his conscience. Other people's ideas and other people's consciences don't matter a bit."

Lester made no answer. His eyes were on the ground. She broke out impetuously:

"You think he's been badly treated?"

"I had rather not express an opinion. I have no right to one."

"Mayn't women care for politics just as strongly as men?" cried the girl, as though arguing the question with herself. "I think it's splendid my mother should care as she does! Corry ought to respect her for it."

Lester made a pretense of gathering up some papers on his desk, by way of covering his silence. Marcia observed him, with red cheeks.

"But of course you don't, you can't, feel with us, Mr. Lester. You're a Liberal."

"No!" he protested mildly, raising his eyes in surprise. "I really don't agree with Coryston at all. I don't intend to label myself just yet, but if I'm anything I think I'm a Conservative."

"But you think other things matter more than politics?"

"Ah yes," he said, smiling, "that I do. Especially—" He stopped.

"Especially—for women?" The breaking of Marcia's delightful smile answered his. "You see, I guessed what you meant to say. What things? I think I know."

"Beauty—poetry—sympathy. Wouldn't you put those first?"

He spoke the words shyly, looking down upon her.

There was something in the mere sound of them that thrilled, that made a music in the girl's ears. She drew a long breath, and suddenly, as he raised his eyes, he saw her as a white vision, lit up, Rembrandt-like, in the darkness, by the solitary light—the lines of her young form, the delicate softness of cheek and brow, the eager eyes.

She held out her hand.

"Good night. I shall see what Meredith has to say about it!"

She held up her volume, ran to the door, and disappeared.