"You were really very clever. Now do have some more tea, and tell me all the news."

"I will have the tea, if you please," he answered, "and you shall have the news, such as it is."

"First of all then," she said, "I hear that you are leaving Medchester, giving up your business and coming to live in London, and that you have had some money left you. Do you know that all this sounds very mysterious?"

"I admit it," he answered, slowly stirring his tea. "Yet in the main--it is true."

"How nice to hear all about it," she sighed, contentedly. "You know I have scarcely had a word with you while my uncle and cousins were up.

Selina monopolized you most disgracefully."

He looked at her with twinkling eyes.

"Selina was very amusing," he said.

"You seemed to find her so," she answered. "But Selina isn't here now, and you have to entertain me. You are really going to live in London?"

He nodded.

"I have taken rooms!"

"Delightful. Whereabouts?" "In Jermyn Street!"

"And are you going to practise?"

He shook his head.

"No, I shall have enough to live on. I am going to study social subjects and politics generally."

"You are going into Parliament?" she exclaimed, breathlessly.

"Some day, perhaps," he answered, hesitatingly. "If I can find a constituency."

She was silent for a moment.

"Do you know, I think I rather dislike you," she said. "I envy you most hideously."

He laughed.

"What an evil nature!"

"Well, I've never denied it. I'm dreadfully envious of people who have the chance of doing things, whose limitations are not chalked out on the blackboard before them."

"Oh, well, you yourself are not at Medchester now," he reminded her.

"You have kicked your own limitation away. Literature is as wide a field as politics."

"That is true enough," she answered. "I must not grumble. After Medchester this is elysium. But literature is a big name to give my little efforts. I'm just a helper on a lady's threepenny paper, and between you and me I don't believe they think much of my work yet."

He laughed.

"Surely they haven't been discouraging you?"

"No, they have been very kind. But they keep on assuring me that I am bound to improve, and the way they use the blue pencil! However, it's only the journalist's part they go for. The little stories are all right still.''

"I should think so," he declared, warmly. "I think they are charming."

"How nice you are," she sighed. "No wonder Selina didn't like going home."

He looked at her in amused wonder.

"Do you know," he said, "you are getting positively frivolous. I don't recognize you. I never saw such a change."

She leaned back in her chair, laughing heartily, her eyes bright, her beautiful white teeth in delightful evidence.

"Oh, I suppose it's the sense of freedom," she exclaimed. "It's delightful, isn't it? Medchester had got on my nerves. I hated it.

One saw nothing but the ugly side of life, day after day. It was hideously depressing. Here one can breathe. There's room for every one."

"The change agrees with you!"

"Why not. I feel years younger. Think how much there is to do, and see, even for a pauper like myself--picture galleries, the shops, the people, the theatres."

He looked at her thoughtfully.

"Don't think me a prig, will you?" he said, "but I want to understand you. In Medchester you used to work for the people--it was the greater part of your life. You are not giving that up altogether, are you?"

She laughed him to scorn.

"Am I such a butterfly? No, I hope to get some serious work to do, and I am looking forward to it. I have a letter of introduction to a Mrs.

Capenhurst, whom I am going to see on Sunday. I expect to learn a lot from her. I was very, very sorry to leave my own girls. It was the only regret I had in leaving Medchester. By the bye, what is this about Mr. Henslow?"

"We are thinking of asking him to resign," Brooks answered. "He has been a terrible disappointment to us."

She nodded.

"I am sorry. From his speeches he seemed such an excellent candidate."

"He was a magnificent candidate," Brooks said ruefully, "but a shocking Member. I am afraid what I heard in the City the other day must have some truth in it. They say that he only wanted to be able to write M.P.

after his name for this last session to get on the board of two new companies. He will never sit for Medchester again."

"He was at the hotel the other day, wasn't he?" Mary asked, "with you and uncle? What has he to say for himself?"

"Well, he shelters himself behind the old fudge about duty to his Party," Brooks answered. "You see the Liberals only just scraped in last election because of the war scandals, and their majority is too small for them to care about any of the rank and file introducing any disputative measures. Still that scarcely affects the question. He won his seat on certain definite pledges, and if he persists in his present attitude, we shall ask him at once to resign."

You still keep up your interest in Medchester, then?"

"Why, yes!" he answered. "Between ourselves, if I could choose, I would rather, when the time comes, stand for Medchester than anywhere."

"I am glad! I should like to see you Member for Medchester. Do you know, even now, although I am so happy, I cannot think about the last few months there without a shudder. It seemed to me that things were getting worse and worse. The people's faces haunt me sometimes."