They think you are a practical man, and just now they want practical men, and they intend to get them. But you will have to be very careful about certain things. I wanted to talk to you about those; that was why I sent for you to have lunch with me alone. People were coming, but, in fact, I put them off. We will go to my room."

Lady Ardingly rose, and Jack followed her. He was not quite sure that he would like what was coming, but he was far too sensible to quarrel with her, for he considered her quite the worst person in the world to quarrel with.

"Yes, I am going to speak plainly," she said. "It is, I think, certain that you will be offered the War Office. Now, you have a very clever wife, who will be admirably useful to you; but you have a great friend who is stupider than a mule, with all her _soi-disant_ brilliance. She is _au fond_ a really vulgar woman, and it is vulgar people who make the stupid mistakes. She has already made one, which might have damaged you seriously, but I do not think it will. Of that presently. I was saying that they will probably give you the War Office; but you cannot with any usefulness retain the post for a day if there is a scandal connected with you--a scandal, that is to say, of the wrong sort."

Jack leaned forward in his chair.

"I don't know why I do not resent this, Lady Ardingly," he said, "or why I do not leave the room; but I do neither."

"Because you are a selfish, or at any rate an ambitious man," she said.

"Every one who is worth his salt is. Now I will put names to my advice."

She paused a moment to take some coffee, and waited till the man had left the room.

"Mildred is a very vulgar woman," she said, "and her vulgarity shows itself in the nature of her mistakes. Silly Billy came here the other day, and I asked him about his scene with you. You did not score there, and if he had not been a clever little fellow in a small sort of bird-like manner, you would have involved yourself in a row of monstrous proportions. He managed you in his microscopical way very successfully.

That is so. He also told me that it was Mildred who had suggested that absurd canard to him. There is the stupidity of the woman. There was no grain of sense in it all. n.o.body who knows, would believe such things about Marie for ten days together. But supposing some gutter-rag of a paper had got hold of it! The wife of the man who was in the running for the Cabinet prosecuting an intrigue with the Liberal candidate of his division of Surrey! How charming! If I had wanted to ruin you, I should have tried to think of something as damaging as that. If I had thought of that I should have been quite content. Did you not see that, my poor fellow?"

"We did not know he was standing at the time," said Jack rather feebly.

"Doubtless. But the secret of success in this world is not to make blunders where one does not know. Any one can avoid blunders if he knows everything. In any case, here is the position. It is sedulously circulated that your wife has an intrigue with Jim Spencer. And who circulates it? This cook! Luckily I did something to stop people talking."

"What was that?"

"I told them I happened to know that Mildred had quarrelled with your wife, and had invented this story out of revenge. That is the case, is it not?"

"It certainly happens to be true. But I don't see how you knew."

"I guessed it was so," said Lady Ardingly. "It was the only reasonable supposition. There is not another which holds water. Besides, if it had not been true, what does it matter? Now, this is the first way in which Mildred might have ruined you. The second concerns you also."

"I don't think we need discuss that," said Jack, who kept his temper only by the knowledge that he would lose a great deal more if he lost it.

"But we had better. You are a decent fellow, Jack; also it will amuse me to see you in the Cabinet, which I shall not, unless you are careful.

Now, you have had an affair with Mildred for many years. At least, so we all suppose; that we all suppose it is the important thing. I do not mind that, morally speaking, because I am in no way responsible for your morals. It is your own business. She happens to stimulate you. Everybody knows about it except one person--your wife. Now, why not tell her?"

"For what reason?" asked Jack, far too much surprised to resent anything.

"Simply for fear she should find out, and--and blow your ships out of the water!" said Lady Ardingly. "You have fallen into a grave mistake.

You have treated your wife as a negligible quant.i.ty, whereas hardly anybody is a negligible quant.i.ty, and certainly not she. That is by the way. At present we are considering your career. Now, if Marie finds out, either while you are still not yet in the Cabinet, or even after that, before you have made yourself clearly felt to be indispensable, you go. For if the middle cla.s.s gets hold of a scandal about a Minister, not yet proven, that man is beyond hope. He cannot weather the storm.

The middle cla.s.s, who are, after all, the people, distrust his public measures because they disapprove of his private life."

"Idiotic on their part," observed Jack.

"No doubt; but the cause of success is to estimate correctly and to take advantage of the idiocy of others. None of us are clever in the way Napoleon was clever. All we can do is to be slightly less idiotic than the rest of mankind. Now you must go. I have a hundred things to do and a thousand people to see. If I can be of any further help to you, let me know."

Jack got up, then paused, indecisive.

"You mean you will tell Marie?" he asked.

"If you wish me to. But there is a simpler plan."

"What is that?" asked Jack.

"Show Mildred the door--the back-door," she added.

"I can't."

"Very good; that is your affair," said she. "But make up your mind soon what you will do. Any line is better than none, as it was always."

At the moment a footman entered.

"Ask her to wait in the drawing-room," said Lady Ardingly, before he had spoken. Then, without pausing: "Good-bye, Jack. Send me a line; or we shall meet at Ascot, shall we not?"

Jack hesitated a moment.

"She is very obstinate," he said.

"Your wife?" asked Lady Ardingly.

"No; the person you asked to wait in the drawing-room."

Lady Ardingly laughed. She never minded being found out.

"So am I," she said. "Don't meet her on the stairs."

"Oh, I am not a fool!" said Jack, almost with gaiety.

"That may be true. But do not take your own wisdom as a working hypothesis," said that immovable woman.

After he had left, Lady Ardingly proceeded to take her maximum exercise for the day. This consisted in walking four times up and down the long gallery of portraits which ran by the reception-rooms. It was nearly a hundred yards in length, and as she stopped once to swallow a small digestive pill, which was presented to her with a wine-gla.s.s of water by her maid, it was nearly ten minutes before she returned to her room and sent a message that the person who was waiting should be shown up. The interval sufficed to pull her auburn wig straight and settle herself with her back to the light.

Mildred was more accustomed to be waited for than to wait, and neither Lady Ardingly's message that she wished to see her at 3.30 nor the period of inaction in this drawing-room had improved a naturally irritable temper. Her determination, in fact, when the tardy summons came, was to be very effusive and full of engagements--a delighted-to-see-you--how-well-you-are-looking--such-a-pleasure--must-go att.i.tude. Lady Ardingly often rubbed her up the wrong way, but she more often gave her advice which, when she was cool, she knew to be right.

She conjectured, if no more, that the subject which was going to be discussed was Jack, but was more than half decided not to discuss it. In her mind, in fact, she labelled Lady Ardingly as an impotent old meddler. Thus she entered.

"Ah, my dear," said Lady Ardingly, "you have been kept waiting, I am afraid. It was an idiotic footman, who thought I was engaged, and did not tell me you were here. How are you, Mildred?"

Mildred sat down. Her dress rustled incredulously.

"Driven," she said--"simply driven! How foolish one is to make a hundred engagements a day, and not enjoy any because one is always thinking about the next!"

"Yes, very foolish," said Lady Ardingly, "especially when one does not enjoy them. Now tell me the news, dear Mildred. I do not go out and I see n.o.body. You are always everywhere. I never saw a woman who sat in the mainspring so much. Tell me all about everybody."

Insensibly Mildred felt mollified. She knew perfectly well that, though Lady Ardingly did not rush about to see everybody, it was only because everybody rushed about to see her; but still there was to her a faint aroma of compliment about the speech. She disentangled a misshapen Yorkshire terrier from her m.u.f.f.

"Who, for instance?" she said. "Now, Jack--he is a friend of yours, I know."

"Of both of ours," said Lady Ardingly with an intonation far more confirmatory, than correcting.