He looked up at her sympathetically.

"If you have once lived with them," he said, "once really understood, you never can forget. You can travel or amuse yourself in any way, but their faces are always coming before you, their voices seem always in your ears. It is the one eternal sadness of life. And the strangest part of it is, that just as you who have once really understood can never forget, so it is the most difficult thing in the world to make those people understand who have not themselves lived and toiled amongst them. It is a cry which you cannot translate, but if once you have heard it, it will follow you from the earth to the stars."

"You too, then," she said, "have some of the old aim at heart. You are not going to immerse yourself wholly in politics?"

"My studies," he said, "will be in life. It is not from books that I hope to gain experience. I want to get a little nearer to the heart of the thing. You and I may easily come across one another, even in this great city."

"You," she said, "are going to watch, to observe, to trace the external only that you may understand the internal. But I am going to work on my hands and knees."

"And you think that I am going to play the dilettante?"

"Not altogether. But you will want to pass from one scheme to another to see the inner workings of all. I shall be content to find occupation in any one.

"I shall be coming to you," he said, "for information and help."

"I doubt it," she answered, cheerfully. "Never mind! It is pleasant to build castles, and we may yet find ourselves working side by side."

He suddenly looked at her.

"I have answered all your questions," he said. "There is something about you which I should like to know."

"I am sure you shall."

"Lord Arranmore came to me when I was staying at the Metropole with your uncle and cousin. He wished me to use my influence with you to induce you to accept a certain sum of money which it seemed that you had already declined."

"Well?"

"Of course I refused. In the first place, as I told him, I was not aware that I possessed any influence over you. And in the second I had every confidence in your own judgment."

She was suddenly very thoughtful.

"My own judgment," she repeated. "I am afraid that I have lost a good deal of faith in that lately."

"Why?"

"I have learned to repent of that impulsive visit of mine to Enton."

"Again why?"

"I was mad with rage against Lord Arranmore. I think that I was wrong.

It was many years ago, and he has repented."

Brooks smiled faintly. The idea of Lord Arranmore repenting of anything appealed in some measure to his sense of humour.

"Then I am afraid that I did him some great harm in accusing him like that--openly. He has seemed to me since like an altered man. Tell me, those others who were there--they believed me?"

"Yes."

"It did him harm--with the lady, the handsome woman who was playing billiards with him?"

"Yes."

"Was he engaged to her?

"No! He proposed to her afterwards, and she refused him."

Her eyes were suddenly dim.

"I am sorry," she said.

"I think," he said, quietly, "that you need not be. You probably saved her a good deal of unhappiness."

She looked at him curiously.

"Why are you so bitter against Lord Arranmore?" she asked.

"I?" he laughed. "I am not bitter against him. Only I believe him to be a man without heart or conscience or principles."

"That is your opinion--really?"

"Really! Decidedly."

"Then I don't agree with you," she answered.

"Why not?"

"Simply that I don't."

"Excellent! But you have reasons as well as convictions?

"Perhaps. Why, for instance, is he so anxious for me to have this money? That must be a matter of conscience?"

"Not necessarily. An accident might bring his Montreal career to light.

His behaviour towards you would be an excellent defence."

She shook her head.

"He isn't mean enough to think so far ahead for his own advantage.

Villain or paragon, he is on a large scale, your Lord Arranmore."

"He has had the good fortune," Brooks said, with a note of satire in his tone, "to attract your sympathies."

"Why not? I struck hard enough at him, and he has borne me no ill-will.

He even made friends with Selina and my uncle to induce me to accept his well, conscience money."

"I need not ask you what the result was," Brooks said. "You declined it, of course."

She looked at him thoughtfully.