The Patrician | Page 5

same."
"I see."
"I might go all the way with him to London! Is Auntie Babs going?"
"No, I don't think anybody is going with his lordship."
"I would, if she were. William!"
"Yes."
"Is Uncle Eustace sure to be elected ?"
"Of course he is."
"Do you think he'll be a good Member of Parliament?"
"Lord Miltoun is very clever, Miss Ann."
"Is he?"
"Well, don't you think so?"
"Does Charles think so?"
"Ask him."

"William!"
"Yes."
"I don't like London. I like here, and I like Cotton, and I like home
pretty well, and I love Pendridny--and--I like Ravensham."
"His lordship is going to Ravensham to-day on his way up, I heard
say."
"Oh! then he'll see great-granny. William----"
"Here's Miss Wallace."
>From the doorway a lady with a broad pale patient face said:
"Come, Ann."
"All right! Hallo, Simmons!"
The entering butler replied:
"Hallo, Miss Ann!"
"I've got to go."
"I'm sure we're very sorry."
"Yes."
The door banged faintly, and in the great room rose the busy silence of
those minutes which precede repasts. Suddenly the four men by the
breakfast fable stood back. Lord Valleys had come in.
He approached slowly, reading a blue paper, with his level grey eyes
divided by a little uncharacteristic frown. He had a tanned yet ruddy,
decisively shaped face, with crisp hair and moustache beginning to go
iron-grey--the face of a man who knows his own mind and is contented
with that knowledge. His figure too, well-braced and upright, with the

back of the head carried like a soldier's, confirmed the impression, not
so much of self-sufficiency, as of the sufficiency of his habits of life
and thought. And there was apparent about all his movements that
peculiar unconsciousness of his surroundings which comes to those
who live a great deal in the public eye, have the material machinery of
existence placed exactly to their hands, and never need to consider
what others think of them. Taking his seat, and still perusing the paper,
he at once began to eat what was put before him; then noticing that his
eldest daughter had come in and was sitting down beside him, he said:
"Bore having to go up in such weather!"
"Is it a Cabinet meeting?"
"Yes. This confounded business of the balloons." But the rather
anxious dark eyes of Agatha's delicate narrow face were taking in the
details of a tray for keeping dishes warm on a sideboard, and she was
thinking: "I believe that would be better than the ones I've got, after all.
If William would only say whether he really likes these large trays
better than single hot-water dishes!" She contrived how- ever to ask in
her gentle voice--for all her words and movements were gentle, even a
little timid, till anything appeared to threaten the welfare of her
husband or children:
"Do you think this war scare good for Eustace's prospects, Father?"
But her father did not answer; he was greeting a new-comer, a tall,
fine-looking young man, with dark hair and a fair moustache, between
whom and himself there was no relationship, yet a certain negative
resemblance. Claud Fresnay, Viscount Harbinger, was indeed also a
little of what is called the 'Norman' type--having a certain firm
regularity of feature, and a slight aquilinity of nose high up on the
bridge--but that which in the elder man seemed to indicate only an
unconscious acceptance of self as a standard, in the younger man gave
an impression at once more assertive and more uneasy, as though he
were a little afraid of not chaffing something all the time.
Behind him had come in a tall woman, of full figure and fine presence,

with hair still brown--Lady Valleys herself. Though her eldest son was
thirty, she was, herself, still little more than fifty. From her voice,
manner, and whole personality, one might suspect that she had been an
acknowledged beauty; but there was now more than a suspicion of
maturity about her almost jovial face, with its full grey-blue eyes; and
coarsened complexion. Good comrade, and essentially 'woman of the
world,' was written on every line of her, and in every tone of her voice.
She was indeed a figure suggestive of open air and generous living,
endowed with abundant energy, and not devoid of humour. It was she
who answered Agatha's remark.
"Of course, my dear, the very best thing possible."
Lord Harbinger chimed in:
"By the way, Brabrook's going to speak on it. Did you ever hear him,
Lady Agatha? 'Mr. Speaker, Sir, I rise--and with me rises the
democratic principle----'"
But Agatha only smiled, for she was thinking:
"If I let Ann go as far as the gate, she'll only make it a stepping- stone
to something else to-morrow." Taking no interest in public affairs, her
inherited