"This morning, then, you thought me a fool?"
"Oh no! Only—well—I knew, you see, that I knew better. I was reasonable, and—"
"Oh! don't finish," said George, hastily; "and don't suppose that I shall ever give you any more good advice."
"Won't you?"
Her mocking look sent a challenge, which he met with outward firmness. Meanwhile he was inwardly haunted by a phrase he had once heard a woman apply to the mental capacities of her best friend. "Her mind?—her mind, my dear, is a shallow chaos!" The words made a neat label, he scoffingly thought, for his own present sensations. For he could not persuade himself that there was much profundity in his feelings towards Miss Sewell, whatever reckless possibilities life might seem to hold at times; when, for instance, she wore that particular pink gown in which she was attired to-night, or when her little impertinent airs suited her as well as they were suiting her just now. Something cool and critical in him was judging her all the time. Ten years hence, he made himself reflect, she would probably have no prettiness left. Whereas now, what with bloom and grace, what with small proportions and movements light as air, what with an inventive refinement in dress and personal adornment that never failed, all Letty Sewell's defects of feature or expression were easily lost in a general aspect which most men found dazzling and perturbing enough. Letty, at any rate within her own circle, had never yet been without partners, or lovers, or any other form of girlish excitement that she desired, and had been generally supposed—though she herself was aware of some strong evidence to the contrary—to be capable of getting anything she had set her mind upon. She had set her mind, as the spectators in this particular case had speedily divined, upon enslaving young George Tressady. And she had not failed. For even during these last stirring days it had been tolerably clear that she and his election had divided Tressady's mind between them, with a balance, perhaps, to her side. As to the measure of her success, however, that was still doubtful—to herself and him most of all.
To-night, at any rate, he could not detach himself from her. He tried repeatedly to talk to the girl on his left, a noble-faced child fresh out of the schoolroom, who in three years' time would be as much Letty Sewell's superior in beauty as in other things. But the effort was too great. The strenuous business of the day had but left him—in fatigue and reaction—the more athirst for amusement and the gratification of another set of powers. He turned back to Letty, and through course after course they chattered and sparred, discussing people, plays and books, or rather, under cover of these, a number of those topics on the borderland of passion whereby men and women make their first snatches at intimacy—till Mrs. Watton's sharp grey eyes smiled behind her fan, and the attention of her neighbour, Lord Fontenoy—an uneasy attention—was again and again drawn to the pair.
Meanwhile, during the first half of dinner, a chair immediately opposite to Tressady's place remained vacant. It was being kept for the eldest son of the house, his mother explaining carelessly to Lord Fontenoy that she believed he was "Out parishing somewhere, as usual."
However, with the appearance of the pheasants the door from the drawing-room opened, and a slim dark-haired man slipped in. He took his place noiselessly, with a smile of greeting to George and his neighbour, and bade the butler in a whisper aside bring him any course that might be going.
"Nonsense, Edward!" said his mother's loud voice from the head of the table; "don't be ridiculous. Morris, bring back that hare entrée and the mutton for Mr. Edward."
The newcomer raised his eyebrows mildly, smiled, and submitted.
"Where have you been, Edward?" said Tressady; "I haven't seen you since the town-hall."
"I have been at a rehearsal. There is a parish concert next week, and I conduct these functions."
"The concerts are always bad," said Mrs. Watton, curtly.
Edward Watton shrugged his shoulder. He had a charming timid air, contradicted now and then by a look of enthusiastic resolution in the eyes.
"All the more reason for rehearsal," he said. "However, really, they won't do badly this time."
"Edward is one of the persons," said Mrs. Watton in a low aside to Lord Fontenoy, "who think you can make friends with people—the lower orders—by shaking hands with them, showing them Burne-Jones's pictures, and singing 'The Messiah' with them. I had the same idea once. Everybody had. It was like the measles. But the sensible persons have got over it."
"Thank you, mamma," said Watton, making her a smiling bow.
Lady Tressady interrupted her talk with the squire at the other end of the table to observe what was going on. She had been chattering very fast in a shrill, affected voice, with a gesticulation so free and French, and a face so close to his, that the nervous and finicking squire had been every moment afraid lest the next should find her white fingers in his very eyes. He felt an inward spasm of relief when he saw her attention diverted.
"Is that Mr. Edward talking his Radicalism?" she asked, putting up a gold eyeglass—"his dear, wicked Radicalism? Ah! we all know where Mr. Edward got it."
The table laughed. Harding Watton looked particularly amused.
"Egeria was in this neighbourhood last week," he said, addressing Lady Tressady. "Edward rode over to see her. Since then he has joined two new societies, and ordered six new books on the Labour Question."
Edward flushed a little, but went on eating his dinner without any other sign of disturbance.
"If you mean Lady Maxwell," he said good-humouredly, "I can only be sorry for the rest of you that you don't know her."
He raised his handsome head with a bright air of challenge that became him, but at the same time exasperated his mother.
"That woman!" said Mrs. Watton with ponderous force, throwing up her hands as she spoke. Then she turned to Lord Fontenoy. "Don't you regard her as the source of half the mischievous work done by this precious Government in the last two years?" she asked him imperiously.
A half-contemptuous smile crossed Lord Fontenoy's worn face.
"Well, really, I'm not inclined to make Lady Maxwell the scapegoat. Let them bear their own misdeeds."
"Besides, what worse can you say of English Ministers than that they should be led by a woman?" said Mr. Watton, from the bottom of the table, in a piping voice. "In my young days such a state of things would have been unheard of. No offence, my dear, no offence," he added hastily, glancing at his wife.
Letty glanced at George, and put up a handkerchief to hide her own merriment.
Mrs. Watton looked impatient.
"Plenty of English Cabinet Ministers have been led by women before now," she said drily; "and no blame to them or anybody else. Only in the old days you knew where you were. Women were corrupt—as they were meant to be—for their husbands and brothers and sons. They wanted something for somebody—and got it. Now they are corrupt—like Lady Maxwell—for what they are pleased to call 'causes,' and it is that which will take the nation to ruin."
At this there was an incautious protest from Edward Watton against the word "corrupt," followed by a confirmatory clamour from his mother and brother which seemed to fill the dining-room. Lady Tressady threw in affected comments from time to time, trying hard to hold her own in the conversation by a liberal use of fan and Christian names, and little personal audacities applied to each speaker in turn. Only Edward Watton, however, occasionally took civil or smiling notice of her; the others ignored her. They were engaged in a congenial task, the hunting of the one disaffected and insubordinate member of their pack, and had for the moment no attention to spare for other people.
"I shall see the great lady, I suppose, in a week or two," said George to Miss Sewell, under cover of the noise. "It is curious that I should never have seen her."
"Who? Lady Maxwell?"
"Yes. You remember I have been four years