PART VIII

I

There was a hooligan knock on Georgie Malwood's bedroom door.

Saying "Aubrey" to herself without any sign either of irritation or petulance, she put down her book, gathered herself together, and slid off the bed. In a suit of boy's pajamas she looked as young and undeveloped as when, at seventeen, she had married Clayburgh in the first week of the War. Her bobbed hair went into points over her ears like horns, and added to her juvenile appearance. She might have been a schoolgirl peeping at life through the keyhole, instead of a woman of twenty-four, older than Methuselah.

She unlocked the door. "Barge in," she said, standing clear.

And Aubrey Malwood, with his six foot two of brawn and muscle, his yellow Viking hair, eyebrows and moustache, barged, as he always did.

"I've just dropped in to tell you," he said, going straight to the looking-glass, "that Feo rang up an hour ago. She wants you to lunch with her in Dover Street."

Perching herself on the window seat, like a pillow girl in Peter Pan, Georgie gazed uninterestedly at that portion of the Park at Knightsbridge which is between the barracks and the Hotel.

"Oh, damn," she said, "I wish she'd leave me alone." Young Malwood was so astonished at this sentiment that he was drawn away from self-admiration. He liked his type immensely.

"I never expected to hear you say that! What's the notion?"

His much-married wife's doglike worship of Feo Fallaray had, as a matter of fact, immediately eliminated him from her daily pursuits and long ago sent him after another form of amusement.

"Oh, I dunno," said Georgie. "She's been different lately; lost her sense of humor, and become serious and sentimental,--the very things she's always hated in other people. You're so fond of yourself that I don't suppose you've ever noticed the shattering effect of having the teacher you imitated go back suddenly to the sloppy state you were in at the beginning of your lessons. I'll go this time and then fall away. Feo's over."

Malwood went back to the glass and posed as a gladiator with an imaginary sword and shield. His magnificent height and breadth and bone made him capable of any gladiatorial effort. Only as to brain was he a case of arrested development. At twenty-eight he was still only just fit for Oxford. In any case, as things were, this desertion from her leader would leave Georgie exactly what she was,--someone who had the legal right to provide him with funds.

"Well," he said, "it's your funeral," and let it go. The fact that the elaborate dressing table was covered with framed photographs of his three equally young predecessors, as well as toilet things bearing their crests and initials, left this perpetual undergraduate unmoved. He had never been in love with Georgie. He had been somewhat attracted by her tinyness and imperturbability, but what had made him ask her to be his wife was the fact that everybody was talking about her as a creator of a record,--three times a widow in five years,--and he was one of those men, who, being unable to attract attention by anything that he could do, felt the need of basking in reflected glory. He had been fatuously satisfied to follow her into a public place and see people nudge each other as she passed. It was a thousand to one that if he had not married Georgie, he would have hunted London to find a girl who had won her way into the _Tatler_ as a high diver or a swallower of knives. Why Georgie had married him was the mystery. Having acquired the married habit, it was probable that she had accepted him before she had had time to discover that beneath his astonishing good looks and magnificent physique there was the mind of a potato. He had turned out to be an expensive hobby because when his father's business had been ruined by the War, he possessed nothing but his pay as a second lieutenant. Peace had removed even that and left him in her little house in Knightsbridge with eight pairs of perfect riding boots, a collection of old civvies, and an absolute incapability of earning a legitimate shilling. With characteristic cold-bloodedness she had, however, immediately advertised that she would not be responsible for his debts, and made him an allowance of ten pounds a week, a fourth of her income after the depredation of income tax. An invulnerable sponge, with a contagious chuckle, a fairly good eye for tennis, and a homogeneous nature, he managed to hang on by the skin of his teeth and was perfectly happy and satisfied. But for Georgie, he must have been a farm laborer in Canada or a salesman in a motor-car shop on the strength of his appearance. Or he might have gone to Ireland in the Black and Tans.

"Well," he said, having delivered his message, "cheerio. I'm going to Datchet for a week to stay on the Mullets' houseboat."

Georgie looked round at him, stirred to a slight curiosity.

"Mullet? New friends?"

"Yes. War profiteers. Rolling in the stuff. Great fun. Know everybody. Champagne and diamonds for breakfast. Haven't got a loose fiver about you, I suppose?"

With a faint smile Georgie pointed to her cigarette case on the dressing table. And without a qualm Malwood opened it, removed his wife's last night's bridge winnings, murmured, "Thanks most awfully," and barged out, whistling a tune from "The League of Notions."

"All right, then. For the last time, lunch with Feo," thought Georgie, moving from the window seat lazily. "She's over."

II

For the first time since Feo had lifted Georgie Malwood into her intimacy, in that half-careless, half-cautious way that belongs usually to the illegitimate offspring of kings, her small, unemotional friend was late for her appointment. Always before, like every other member of the gang, Georgie Malwood had reported on the early side of the prescribed moment and killed time without impatience until it had occurred to Feo to put in an appearance. That morning, which was without word from Arrowsmith, as she had predicted with the uncanny intuition that makes women suffer before as well as after they are hurt, Feo was punctual. She entered her den with the expectation of finding Georgie curled up on the sofa, halfway through a slim volume of new poems. The room was empty and there had been no message of apology, no hastily scribbled note of endearment and explanation.

During the longest forty-five minutes that she had ever spent, Feo passed from astonishment to anger and finally into the chilly realization that her uncharacteristic behavior of the last few weeks had been discussed and criticized, and that the judgment of her friends was unmistakably reflected in the new attitude of the hitherto faithful and obsequious Georgie,--always the first to catch the color of her surroundings. She, Feo, the Queen of Flippancy, the ringleader of eroticism, had had the temerity to play serious, an unforgivable crime in the estimation of the decadent set which had ignored the War and emerged triumphantly into the chaos of peace. Well, there it was. A long and successful innings was ended. She would be glad to withdraw from the field.

She waited in her favorite place with her beautiful straight back to the fireplace, both elbows on the low mantel board and one foot on the fender. Her face was as white as a candle, her large violet eyes were filled with grim amusement, and her wide, full-lipped mouth was a little twisted. She wore a frock that was the color of seaweed, cut almost up to her knees, with short sleeves, a loose belt, and a great blob of jade attached to a thin gold chain lying between her breasts. Her thick, wiry hair was out of curl and fell straight, like that of a page in the Court of Cesare Borgia. For all her modernity there was something about her that was peculiarly medieval, masculinely girlish rather than effeminately boyish. She might have been the leading member of a famous troupe of Russian ballet dancers, ready at a moment's notice to slip out of her wrapper and spring with athletic grace high into the air.

Her first remark upon Georgie's lazy entrance was Feoistic and disconcerting.

"So I'm over, I see," she said, and waited ironically for its effect.

Not honest enough to say, "Yes, you are," Georgie hedged, with some little confusion.

"What makes you think so, Feo?"

"Your infernal rudeness, my dear, which you wouldn't have dared to indulge in a week ago. You've all sensed the fact that I'm sick to tears of the games I've led you into, and would gladly have gone in for babies if I'd had the luck to seem desirable to the right man." She made a long arm and rang the bell. "I am ripe for repentance, you see, or perhaps it might be more accurate, though less dramatic, to say eager for a new sensation. It isn't coming off, but you can all go and hang yourselves so far as I'm concerned. I'm out. I'm going to continue to be serious. Bring lunch in here," she added, as a footman framed himself in the doorway, "quickly. I'm starving."

Almost any other girl who had been the favorite of such a woman as Feo would have found in this renunciation of leadership something to cause emotion. Mere gratitude for many favors and much kindness seemed to demand that. But this young phlegmatic thing was just as unmoved as she had been on receipt of the various war office telegrams officially regretting the deaths of Lord Clayburgh, Captain Graham Macoover, and Sir Harry Pytchley. She lit the inevitable cigarette, chose the much-cushioned divan, and stretched herself at full length.

"I can do with a little groundsel too," she said, as though the other subject had been threshed out.

And so it had, for the time being. Feo, oddly enough, had no bricks to throw. She could change her religion, it seemed, without pitching mud at the church of her recent beliefs. It was not until lunch was finished and the last trickle of resentment at Georgie's failure to apologize had gone out of her system that she returned to the matter and began, in a way, to think aloud. It was not as indiscreet as it might have been, because Georgie Malwood was completely self-contained and had developed concentration to such a degree, her first three husbands having been given to arguing, that she could lie and follow her own train of thought as easily in a room in which a mass of women were playing bridge as in a monkey house. Her interest in Feo was dead. She was over.

And so Feo gave herself away to a little person whose ears were closed.

"I don't know what exactly to do," she said. "At the moment, I feel like a fish out of water. If Arrowsmith had liked me and been ready to upset the conventional ideas of his exemplary family, I'd have eloped with him, however frightfully it would have put Edmund in the cart. I don't mind owning that Arrowsmith is the only man I've ever met who could have turned me into the Spartan mother and worthy _haus-frau_. I had dreams of living with him behind the high walls of a nice old house and making the place echo with the pattering feet of babes. It's the culminating disappointment of several months of 'em,--the bad streak which all of us have to go through at one time or another, I suppose. However, he doesn't like me, worse luck, and so there it is. So I think I'd better make the best of a bad job and cultivate Edmund. I think I'd better study the life of Lady Randolph Churchill and make myself useful to my husband. Politics are in a most interesting state just now, with Lloyd George on the verge of collapse at last, and the brainy dishonesty of a woman suddenly inspired with political ambition is exactly what Edmund needs to push him to the top. He has been too long without a woman's unscrupulous influence."

She began to pace the room with long swinging strides, eagerly, clutching at this new idea like a drowning man to a spar. Her eyes began to sparkle and the old ring came back to her voice. Here was a way to use her superabundant energy and build up a new hobby.

"I'm no longer a flapping girl with everything to discover," she went on, "I've had my share of love stuff. By Jove, I'll use my intelligence, for a change. I'll get into the fight and develop strategy. Every one's looking to Edmund as the one honest man in the political game, and I'll buckle to and help him. He's an amazing creature. I've always admired him, and there's something that suits my present state of mind in making up to him for my perfectly rotten treatment all these years. If I can't make a lover into a husband, by Jingo, I can set to work to make a husband into a lover. There's an idea for you, Feo, my pet! There's a mighty interesting scheme to dig your teeth into, my broad-shouldered friend!"

She sent out an excited laugh and flung up her hand as though to welcome a brain wave. Her amazing resilience stood her in good stead in this crisis of her life,--to say nothing of her courage and queer sense of humor. Her blood began to move again. Fed up with decadence, she would plump whole-heartedly for usefulness now, be normal, go to work, get into the good books of George Lytham and his party, surprise Fallaray by her sudden allegiance to his cause and to him, and gradually break down the door that she had slammed in his face.

"I'll let my hair grow," she continued gayly, working the vein that was to rescue her from despondency and failure with pathetic eagerness.

"I'll chuck eccentric clothes. I'll turn up slang and blasphemy. I'll teach myself manners and the language of old political hens. I'll keep brilliance within speed limits. Yes, I'll do all that if I have to work like a coolie. And I'll tell you what else I'll do. I'll bet you a thousand pounds to sixpence that before the end of the year I'll be the wife--I said the wife, Georgie--of the next Prime Minister. Will you take it?"

She drew up short, alight and excited, her foot already on the beginning of the new road, and paused for a reply.

Georgie stretched like a young Angora cat and yawned with perfect frankness.

"I'll take whatever I can get, Feo," she said. "But what the devil are you talking about? I haven't heard a blessed word."

And Feo's laugh must have carried into Bond Street.

III

And when Georgie had transferred herself from the many-cushioned divan to her extremely smart car, in which, with an expressionless face and a mind as calm as a cheese, she was going to drive to Hurlingham to be present at, rather than to watch, the polo, Feo went upstairs.

She felt that she must walk, and walk quickly, in an endeavor to keep up with her new line of thought, at the end of which she saw, more and more clearly, a most worth-while goal. Before she could arrive at this, she could see a vista of bunkers ahead of her to negotiate which all her gifts of intrigue would have, happily, to be exercised. To give interest and excitement to her plan of becoming Fallaray's wife in fact, as well as by law, she required bunkers and needed difficulties. The more the merrier. She knew that, at present, Fallaray was as far away from her as though he were at the North Pole,--and as cold. She was dead certain of the fact that she had been of no more account to him, from the first few hours of their outrageous honeymoon, than a piece of furniture in one of the rooms in his house of which he never made use. That being so, she could see the constant and cunning employment of the brains that she had allowed to lie fallow through all her rudimentary rioting,--brains that she possessed in abundance, far above the average. In the use of these lay her salvation, her one chance to swing herself out of the great disappointment and its subsequent loose-endedness which had been brought about by Arrowsmith's sudden deflection. Her passionate desire for this man was not going easily to die. She knew that. Her dreams would be filled with him for a considerable time, of course. She realized, also, looking at that uncompleted episode with blunt honesty, that, but for him, she would still be playing the fool, giving herself and her gifts to the entertainment of all the half-witted members of the gang. To the fastidious Arrowsmith and her unrequited love she owed her sudden determination to make herself useful to Fallaray and finally to become, moving Heaven and earth in the process, his wife. This was the paradoxical way in which her curious mind worked. No tears and lamentations for her. She had no use for them. On the contrary, she had courage and pride, and by setting herself the most difficult task that she could possibly have chosen, two things would result,--her sense of adventure would be gratified to the hilt and Arrowsmith shown the stuff of which she was made.

But on her way to her room, which was to be without Lola until the following morning, she stopped in the corridor, turned and went to the door of Fallaray's den. After a moment's hesitation she entered, feeling that she was trespassing, never before having gone into it of her own volition. She could not be caught there because Fallaray had escaped to his beloved Chilton, she remembered. Her desire was to stand there alone for a few moments, to merge herself into its atmosphere; to get from its book-lined walls and faint odor of tobacco something of the sense of the man who had unconsciously become her partner.

The vibrations of the room as they came to her were those of one which had belonged to an ascetic, long dead and held in the sort of respect by his country that is shown by the preservation of his work place. It was museum-like and tidy, even prim. The desk was in perfect order and had the cold appearance of not having been used for a century. The fireplace was clean and empty. The waste-paper basket might never have been employed. There was nothing personal to give the place warmth and life. No photographs of women or children. No old pipes. And even in the cold eyes of the bust of Dante that looked down upon her from the top of one of the bookcases there was no expression, either of surprise or resentment at her intrusion.

Most women would have been chilled, and a little frightened, there. It would have been natural for them, in Feo's circumstances, had they possessed imagination, to have been struck with a sense of remorse. It should have been their business, if nothing else, to see that this room lived and had personality, comfort and a little color,--flowers from time to time, and at least one charming picture of a youngster on the parental desk. And Feo did feel, as she looked about in her new mood, a little shiver of shame and the red-hot needle of repentance pricking her hitherto dormant conscience.

"Poor old Edmund," she said aloud, "what have I done to him? This place is dry, bloodless, like a mausoleum. Well, I'll alter it all. I have a job, thank God. Something to set my teeth into. Something to direct my energy at,--if it isn't too late."

And as this startling afterthought struck her, she wheeled round, darted across the room to the place where a narrow slip of looking-glass hung in an old gold frame, and put herself through a searching examination.

"Mf! Still attractive in your own peculiar way," she said finally, with relief. "The early bloom gone, of course; lines here and there, especially round the eyes. Massage and the proper amount of sleep will probably rub those away. But there's distinction about you, Feo dear, and softness can be cultivated. You're as hard as an oil painting now, you priceless rotter. However, hope springs eternal, and where there's a will there's a way."

She laughed at herself for these nursery quotations and clenched her fists for the fray. But as she turned, fairly well satisfied with the result of her inspection, she heard steps in the corridor--Fallaray's steps--and the blood rushed into her face. By George, she was going to be caught, after all.

IV

Fallaray? This sun-tanned, smiling man with shoulders square, chin high, and a song in his eyes, who came into the room like a southwest gale?

If he felt surprise at the unfamiliar sight of Feo in his den, he allowed nothing of it to show. He held out a cordial hand and went to her eagerly.

"I've come up to town to see you," he said. "You must have got my S. O. S."

The manner provided the second shock. But Feo returned the pressure of his hand and tried instantly to think of an answer that would be suitable to her new role.

"I think I must have done so," she said quietly, returning his smile. "Your holiday has worked wonders, Edmund."

"A miracle, an absolute miracle!"

A nearer look proved that his word was the right one. Here was almost the young Fallaray of the tennis courts and the profile that she had set herself impishly to acquire in those old days. Good Heavens, could it be that she _was_ too late, and that another woman had brought about this amazing change? She refused to permit the thought to take root. She told herself that she had had her share of disappointments. He had needed rest and his beloved Chilton, bathed in the most un-English sunlight, had worked its magic. It must be so. Look at this friendliness. That wasn't consistent with the influence of another woman. And yet, as an expert in love, she recognized the unmistakable look.

"I'm only staying the night here," he said. "I'm off to Chilton again in the morning. So there's no time to lose. Can you give me ten minutes?"

"Of course," she said. "And as many more as you care to ask for. I'm out of the old game." She hurried to get that in, astonished at her uncharacteristic womanliness.

But he was one-eyed, like a boy. What at any other time would have brought an incredulous exclamation left him now incurious, without surprise. He was driving hard for his own goal. Anything that affected Feo, or any one else, except Lola, didn't matter. Her revolutionary statement passed almost unheard. He pushed an armchair into place.

"Sit down," he said, "I want to talk to you."

And as she sat down it was with a sudden sense of fatalism. There was something in all this that was predetermined, inevitable. That flame had been set alight in him by love, and nothing else. She felt, sitting there, like that most feeble of all figures, Canute. What was the use in trying to persuade herself that what she dreaded to hear was not going to be said? She was too late. She had let this man go.

He walked up and down for a moment, restless and wound up, passing and repassing the white-faced woman who could have told him precisely what he was about to say.

"I want to be set free," he said, with almost as little emotion as would have been called up by the discussion of a change of butchers. "I want you to let me arrange to be divorced. Something has happened that has altered my entire scheme of life. I want to begin all over again. I have come back this afternoon to put this to you and to ask you to help me. I think I know that many times since we've been married you would have asked me to do this, if I hadn't been in politics. I'm grateful to you, as I'm sure you know, for having respected what was my career to that extent. I am going out. My resignation is in my pocket. It is to be sent to the P. M. to-night. When I go back to-morrow, it will be as a free man, so far as Westminster is concerned. I want to return to Chilton, having left instructions with your lawyers, with your permission, to proceed with the action. The evidence necessary will be provided and the case will be undefended. I shall try to have it brought forward at the earliest possible moment. May I ask you to be kind enough to meet me in this matter?"

He drew up in front of her and waited, with as little impatience as breeding would permit.

If this question had been put to her a week ago, or yesterday, she would have cried out, "Yes," with joy and seen herself able to face a future with Arrowsmith, such as she had pictured in her dreams. It came upon her now, on top of her determination to turn over a new leaf, like a breaker, notwithstanding the fact that she had seen it coming. But she got up, pride and courage and tradition in every line of her eccentrically dressed body, and faced him.

"You may," she replied. "And I will help you in every possible way. It's the least that I can do."

"Thank you," he said. "I am deeply grateful. I knew that you would say just that." And he bowed before turning to go to his desk. "Who _are_ your lawyers?"

She hadn't any lawyers, but she remembered the name of the firm in which one of the partners was the husband of a woman in the gang, and she gave it to him.

He wrote it down eagerly. "I'm afraid it will be necessary for you to see these people in the morning. Is that perfectly convenient?"

"Perfectly," she said. "I have no engagements, as it happens."

"Then I will write a statement of the facts," he said, "at once. The papers can be served upon me at Chilton."

It was easy to get out of marriage as it had been to get into it.

"Is that all?" she asked, with a touch of her old lightness.

He rose. "Yes, thank you," he said, and went to the door to open it for her. There were youth and elasticity and happiness all about him.

But as she watched him cross the room, something flashed in front of her eyes, a vivid ball of foolish years which broke into a thousand pieces at her feet, among the jagged ends of which she could see the ruins of a great career, the broken figure of a St. Anthony, with roses pinned to the cross upon his chest.

He stopped her as she was going and held out his hand again.

"I am very grateful, Feo."

And she smiled and returned his grasp. "The best of luck," she said. "I hope you'll be very happy, for a change."

V

Having now no incentive to go either to her room or anywhere else, her new plan dying at its birth, Feo remained in the corridor, standing with her back against one of the pieces of Flemish tapestry which Simpkins had pointed out to Lola. She folded her arms, crossed one foot over the other, and dipped her chin, not frowning, not with any sort of self-pity, but with elevated eyebrows and her mouth half open, incredulous.

"Of course I'm not surprised at Edmund's being smashed on a girl," she told herself. "How the Dickens he's gone on so long is beyond belief. I hope she's a nice child,--she must be young; he's forty; I hope he's not been bird-limed by one of the afterwar virgins who are prowling the earth for prey. I'm very ready to make way gracefully and have a dash at something else, probably hospital work, sitting on charity boards with the dowagers who wish to goodness they had dared to be as loose as I've been. But--but what I want to know is, who's shuffling the cards? Why the devil am I getting this long run of Yarboroughs? I can't hold anything,--anything at all, except an occasional knave like Macquarie. Why this run of bad luck now? Why not last year, next year, next week? Why should Edmund deliberately choose to-day, of all days, to come back, with no warning, and put a heavy foot bang in the middle of my scheme of retribution? Is it--meant? I mean it's too beautifully neat to be an accident. Is it the good old upper cut one always gets for playing the giddy ox, I wonder?--Mf! Interesting. Very. More to come, too, probably, seeing that I'm still on my feet. I've got to get it in the solar plexus and slide under the ropes, I suppose, now they're after me. 'Every guilty deed holds in itself the seed of retribution and undying pain.' Well, I'm a little nervous, like some poor creature on the way to the operating table; and--and I'll tell you what else I am, by George! I'm eaten up with curiosity to know who the girl is, and how she managed to get into the line of vision of this girl-blind man,--and I don't quite know how I shall be able to contain myself until I satisfy this longing.--Oh, hullo, Lola. This is good. I didn't expect you till the morning. But I don't mind saying that I've never been so pleased to see anybody as you, my dear. Had a good time?"

She went to the top of the stairs and waited for Lola to come up, smiling and very friendly. She was fond of this girl. She had missed her beyond words,--not only for her services, which were so deft, so sure-fingered, but also for her smile, her admiration. Good little Lola; clever little Lola too, by George. That Carlton episode,--most amusing. And this recent business, which, she remembered, was touched with a sort of--what? Was ecstasy the word? Good fun to know what had happened. Thank the Lord there was going to be a pause between knock-outs, after all.

Dressed in her perfectly plain ready-made walking frock, her own shoes and a neat little hat that she had bought in Queen's Road, Bayswater, Lola came upstairs quickly with her eyes on Feo's face. She seemed hardly to be able to hold back the words that were trembling on her lips. It was obvious that she had been crying; her lids were red and swollen. But she didn't look unhappy or miserable, as a girl might if everything had gone wrong; nor in the least self-conscious. She wore neither her expression as lady's maid, nor that of the young widow to whom some one had given London; but of a mother whose boy was in trouble and must be got out of it, at once, _please_, and helped back to his place among other good boys.

"Will you come down to your room, Lady Feo?" she asked. "Mr. Lytham will be here in a few minutes and I want you to see him."

Lytham--young Lochinvar! How priceless if he were the man for whom she had dressed this child up.

"Why, of course. But what's the matter, Lola? You've been crying. You look fey."

Lola put her hand on Feo's arm, urgently. "Please come down," she said. "I want to tell you something before Mr. Lytham comes."

Well, this seemed to be her favor-granting day, as well as one of those during which Fate had recognized her as being on his book. First Edmund and then Lola,--there was not much to choose between their undisguised egotism. And the lady's maid business,--that was all over, plainly. George Lytham,--who'd have thought it? If Lola were in trouble, she had a friend in that house.

And so, without any more questions, she went back to her futuristic den which, after her brief talk with Fallaray, seemed to belong to a very distant past. But before Lola could begin to tell her story, a footman made his appearance and said that Mr. Lytham was in the hall.

"Show him in here," said Feo and turned to watch the door.

She wondered if she would be able to tell from his expression what was the meaning of her being brought into this,--a disinclination on his part to take the blame, or an earnest desire to do what was right under the circumstances? She never imagined the possibility of his not knowing that Lola was a lady's maid dressed in the feathers of the jay. Unlike Peter Chalfont, who accepted without question, Lytham held things up to the light and examined their marks.

There was, however, nothing uncomfortable in his eyes. On the contrary, he looked more than ever like the captain, Feo thought, of a County Cricket Club, healthy, confident and fully alive to his enormous responsibility. He wore a suit of thin blue flannels, the M. C. C. tie under a soft low collar, and brown shoes that had become almost red from long and expert treatment. He didn't shake hands like a German, with a stiff deference contradicted by a mackerel eye, or with the tender effusion of an actor who imagines that women have only to come under his magnetism to offer themselves in sacrifice. Bolt upright, with his head thrown back, he shook hands with an honest grip, without deference and without familiarity, like a good cricketer.

"How do you do, Lady Feo," he said, in his most masculine voice. "It's kind of you to see us." Then he turned to Lola with a friendly smile. "Your telephone message caught me just as I was going to dash off for a game of tennis after a hard day, Madame de Breze," he added.

Oh, so this was another of the de Breze episodes, was it, like the one with Beauty Chalfont. Curiosity came hugely to Feo's rescue. Here, at any rate, was a break in her run of bad luck, very welcome. What on earth could be the meaning of this quaint meeting,--George Lytham, the earnest worker pledged to reconstruction, and this enigmatic child, who might have stood for Joan of Arc? If Lola had caught Lytham and brought him to Dover Street to receive substantiation, Feo was quite prepared to lie on her behalf. What a joke to palm off the daughter of a Queen's Road jeweler on the early-Victorian mother of the worthy George!

"Well?" she said, looking from one to the other with a return of her impish delight in human experimentation.

"Mr. Lytham can explain this better than I can," said Lola quietly.

"I'm not so sure about that, but I'll do my best."

He drew a chair forward and sat down. Under ordinary circumstances, where there was the normal amount of happiness, or even the mutual agreement to give and take that goes with the average marriage, his task would have been a difficult one. But in the case of Feo and his chief he felt able to deal with the matter entirely without self-consciousness, or delicacy in the choice of words.

"I needn't worry you with any of the details of the new political situation, Lady Feo. You know them, probably, as well as I do. But what you don't know, because the moment isn't yet ripe for the publication of our plans, is that Mr. Fallaray has been chosen to lead the Anti-waste Party, which is concentrating its forces to rout the old gang out of politics at the next General Election, give Parliament back its lost prestige, and do away with the pernicious influence of the Press Lords. A big job, by Jove, which Fallaray alone can achieve."

"Well?" repeated Feo, wondering what in the world this preamble had to do with the case in question.

"Well, at the end of the meeting of my party yesterday, I was sent down to Chilton Park to tell Mr. Fallaray our plans. I was stultified to be told that he had decided to chuck politics."

"And go in for love. Yes, I know. But what has this got to do with Lola,--with Madame de Breze?"

That was the point that beat Feo, the thing that filled her with a sort of impatient astonishment. Was this uncommunicative girl, who seemed to her to be so essentially feminine, whose metier in life was obviously to purr under the touch of a masculine hand, who had been given a holiday to go on a love chase with Chalfont, presumably, somehow connected with politics? It was incredible.

"Oh, you've seen Fallaray."

"Yes, my dear man, yes! He broke the news to me the moment he came in,"

"Did he ask you to give him a divorce?"

"He did, without a single stutter."

"And you said----"

"But--my dear young Lochinvar, may I make so bold as to ask why this perfectly personal matter has to