"How old is he?"

"Twenty-eight--or somewhere thereabouts."

"What is he doing? Where is he? Why don't we know him?"

"He doesn't approve of me," Lord Arranmore said. "Fact, really! We are scarcely on speaking terms."

"Why not?"

"Says I deserted his mother. So I did! Played the blackguard altogether. Left 'em both to starve, or next door to it!"

Mr. Hennibul fetched out his handkerchief and dabbed his forehead.

"You are serious, Arranmore?"

"Rather! You wouldn't expect me to be frivolous on this hock."

"That young man must be talked to," Mr. Hennibul declared. "He ought to be filling his proper place in the world. It's no use carrying on a grudge against his own father. Let me have a try at him."

"No!" Lord Arranmore said, quietly. "I am obliged to you, Hennibul, but the matter is one which does not admit of outside interference, however kindly. Besides, the boy is right. I wilfully deserted both him and his mother, and she died during my absence. My life, whilst away from them, was the sort one forgets--or tries to--and he knows about it.

Further, when I returned to England I was two years before I took the trouble to go and see him. I merely alluded to these domestic matters that you might not wholly misjudge the situation."

Mr. Hennibul went on with his supper in silence. Lord Arranmore.

whose appetite had soon failed him, leaned back in his chair and watched the people in the further room.

"This rather puts me off politics," he remarked, after a while. "I don't like the look of the people."

"Oh, you'll get in for the select crushers," Mr. Hennibul said. "This is a rank and file affair. You mustn't judge by appearances. But why must you specialize? Take my advice. Don't go in specially for politics, or society, or sport. Mix them all up. Be cosmopolitan and commonplace."

"Upon my word, Hennibul, you are a genius," Arranmore declared, "and yonder goes my good fairy."

He sprang up and disappeared into the further room.

"Lady Caroom," he exclaimed, bending over her shoulder. "I never suspected it of you."

She started slightly--she was silent perhaps for the fraction of a second. Then she looked up with a bright smile, meeting him on his own ground.

"But of you," she cried, "it is incredible. Come at once and explain."

CHAPTER V

BROOKS ENLISTS A RECRUIT

Brooks had found a small restaurant in the heart of fashionable London, where the appointments and decorations were French, and the waiters were not disposed to patronize. Of the cooking neither he nor Mary Scott in those days was a critic. Nevertheless she protested against the length of the dinner which he ordered.

"I want an excuse," he declared, laying down the carte, "for a good long chat. We shall be too late for the theatre, so we may as well resign ourselves to an hour or so of one another's society."

She shook her head.

"A very apt excuse for unwarrantable greediness," she declared. "Surely we can talk without eating?"

He shook his head.

"You do not smoke, and you do not drink liqueurs," he remarked. "Now I have noticed that it is simply impossible for one to sit before an empty table after dinner and not feel that one ought to go. Let the waiter take your cape. You will find the room warm.

"Do you remember," she asked him, "the first night we dined together?"

He looked at her with twinkling eyes.

"Rather! It was my introduction to your uncle's household. Selina sat on my left, and Louise on my right. You sat opposite, tired and disagreeable."

"I was tired--and I am always disagreeable."

"I have noticed it," he agreed, equably. "I hope you like oysters."

"If Selina were to see us now," she remarked, with a sudden humorous smile, "how shocked she would be."

"What a little far-away world it seems down there," he said thoughtfully. "After all, I am glad that I have not to live in Medchester all my life."

"You have been there this afternoon, haven't you?"

"Yes. Henslow is giving us a lot of trouble. I am afraid we shall lose the seat next election."

"Do you mind?"

"Not much. I am no party politician. I want to see Medchester represented by a man who will go there with a sense of political proportion, and I don't care whether he calls himself Liberal, or Radical, or Conservative, or Unionist."

"Please explain what you mean by that," she begged.

"Why, yes. I mean a man who will understand how enormously more important is the welfare of our own people, the people of whom we are making slaves, than this feverish Imperialism and war cant. Mind, I think our patriotism should be a thing wholly understood. It needn't be talked about. It makes showy fireworks for the platform, but it's all unnecessary and to my mind very undignified. If only people would take that for granted and go on to something worth while."

"Are things any better in Medchester just now?" she asked.

"On the surface, yes, but on the surface only. More factories are running half-time, but after all what does that mean? It's slow starvation. A man can't live and keep a family on fifteen shillings a week, even if his wife earns a little. He can't do it in a dignified manner, and with cleanliness and health. That is what he has a right to. That is what the next generation will demand. He should have room to expand. Cleanliness, air, fresh food. Every man and woman who is born into the world has a God-given right to these, and there are millions in Medchester, Manchester, and all the great cities who are denied all three."

"So all Henslow's great schemes, his Royal Commissions, his Protection Duties, his great Housing Bill, have come to nothing then?" she remarked.

"To less than nothing," he answered, gloomily. "The man was a fraud.

He is not worth attempting to bully. He is a puppet politician of a type that ought to have been dead and buried generations ago. Enoch Stone is our only hope in the House now. He is a strong man, and he has hold of the truth."

"Have they decided upon Henslow's successor?" she asked.

"Not yet," he answered.

She looked up at him.