A man of middle age, gray-headed, spare in figure, emerged from one of the French windows of the cottage.

"Marion, when did you say that you expected Enid?"

"Between three and four, papa."

"I don't believe Glenwilliam himself will get here at all. There will be a long Cabinet this afternoon, and another to-morrow probably--Sunday or no Sunday!"

"Well then, he won't come, father," said the daughter, placidly, thrusting her hand into a sock riddled with holes, and looking at it with concern.

"Annoying! I wanted him to meet Coryston--who said he would be here to tea."

Miss Atherstone looked a little startled.

"Will that do, father? You know Enid told me to ask Arthur Coryston, and I wrote yesterday."

"Do? Why not? Because of politics? They must have got used to that in the Coryston family! Or because of the gossip that Arthur is to have the estates? But it's not his fault. I hear the two brothers are on excellent terms. They say that Arthur has warned his mother that he means to make it up to Coryston somehow."

"Enid doesn't like Lord Coryston," said Miss Atherstone, slowly.

"I dare say. He finds out her weak points. She has a good many. And he's not a ladies' man. Between ourselves, my dear, she poses a good deal. I never know quite where to have her, though I dandled her as a baby."

"Oh, Enid's all right," said Marion Atherstone, taking a fresh needleful of brown wool. Miss Atherstone was not clever, though she lived with clever people, and her powers of expressing herself were small. Her father, a retired doctor, on the other hand, was one of the ablest Liberal organizers in the country. From his perch on the Mintern hills he commanded half the midlands, in more senses than one; knew thirty or forty const.i.tuencies by heart; was consulted in all difficulties; was better acquainted with "the pulse of the party" than its chief agent, and was never left out of count by any important Minister framing an important bill.

He had first made friends with the man who was now the powerful head of English finance, when Glenwilliam was the young check-weigher of a large Staffordshire colliery; and the friendship--little known except to an inner ring--was now an important factor in English politics. Glenwilliam did nothing without consulting Atherstone, and the cottage on the hill had been the scene of many important meetings, and some decisions which would live in history.

Marion Atherstone, on the other hand, though invaluable to her father, and much appreciated by his friends, took no intellectual part in his life.

Brilliant creatures--men and women--came and went, to and from the cottage.

Marion took stock of them, provided them with food and lodging, and did not much believe in any of them. Atherstone was a philosopher, a free-thinker, and a vegetarian. Marion read the _Church Family Times_, went diligently to church, and if she had possessed a vote, and cared enough about it to use it, would probably have voted Tory. All the same she and her father were on the best of terms and perfectly understood each other.

Among the brilliant creatures, however, who came and went, there was one who had conquered her. For Enid Glenwilliam, Marion felt the profound affection that often links the plain, scrupulous, conscientious woman to some one or other of the Sirens of her s.e.x. When Enid came to the cottage Marion became her slave and served her hand and foot. But the probability is that she saw through the Siren--what there was to see through--a good deal more sharply than her father did.

Atherstone took a garden chair beside her, and lit his pipe. He had just been engaged in drafting an important Liberal manifesto. His name would probably never appear in connection with it. But that mattered nothing to him. What did vex him was that he probably would not have an opportunity of talking it over with Glenwilliam before it finally left his hands. He was pleased with it, however. The drastic, or scathing phrases of it kept running through his head. He had never felt a more thorough, a more pa.s.sionate, contempt for his opponents. The Tory party must go! One more big fight, and they would smash the unclean thing. These tyrants of land, and church, and finance!--democratic England when it once got to business--and it was getting to business--would make short work of them.

As he looked out over the plain he saw many things well fitted to stir the democratic pulse. There among the woods, not a mile from the base of the hills, lay the great cla.s.sic pile of Coryston, where "that woman" held sway. Farther off on its hill rose Hoddon Grey, identified in this hostile mind with Church ascendancy, just as Coryston was identified with landlord ascendancy. If there were anywhere to be found a narrower pair of bigots than Lord and Lady William Newbury, or a more poisonous reactionary than their handsome and plausible son, Atherstone didn't know where to lay hands on them.

One white dot in the plain, however, gave him unmixed satisfaction. He turned, laughing to his daughter.

"Coryston has settled in--with a laborer and his wife to look after him. He has all sorts of ructions on his hands already."

"Poor Lady Coryston!" said Marion, giving a glance at the cla.s.sical cupolas emerging from the woods.

"My dear--she began it. And he is quite right--he _has_ a public duty to these estates."

"Couldn't he go and stir up people somewhere else? It looks so ugly."

"Oh! women have got to get used to these things, if they play such strong parts as Lady Coryston. The old kid-glove days, as between men and women, are over."

"Even between mothers and sons?" said Marion, dubiously.

"I repeat--she began it! Monstrous, that that man should have made such a will, and that a mother should have taken advantage of it!"

"Suppose she had been a Liberal," said Marion, slyly.

Atherstone shrugged his shoulders--too honest to reply.

He ruminated over his pipe. Presently his eyes flashed.

"I hear Coryston's very servants--his man and wife--were evicted from their cottage for political reasons."

"Yes, by that Radical miller who lives at Martover," said Marion.

Atherstone stared.

"My dear!--"

"The wife told me," said Marion, calmly, rolling up her socks.

"I say, I must look into that," said Atherstone, with discomposure. "It doesn't do to have such stories going round--on our side. I wonder why Coryston chose them."

"I should think--because he hates that kind of thing on both sides." The slightest twinge of red might have been noticed on Miss Atherstone's cheek as she spoke. But her father did not notice it. He lifted his head to listen.

"I think I hear the motor."

"You look tired," said Marion to her guest. The first bout of conversation was over, and Dr. Atherstone had gone back to his letters.

Enid Glenwilliam took off her hat, accepted the cushion which her hostess was pressing upon her, and lay at ease in her cane chair.

"You wouldn't wonder, if you could reckon up my week!" she said, laughing.

"Let's see--four dinners, three b.a.l.l.s, two operas,--a week-end at Windsor, two bazars, three meetings, two concerts, and tea-parties galore! What do you expect but a rag!"

"Don't say you don't like it!"

"Oh yes, I like it. At least, if people don't ask me to things I'm insulted, and when they do--"

"You're bored?"

"It's you finished the sentence!--not I! And I've scarcely seen father this week except at breakfast. _That's_ bored me horribly."

"What have you _really_ been doing?"

"Inquisitor!--I have been amusing myself."

"With Arthur Coryston?"

Marion turned her large fresh-colored face and small gray eyes upon her companion.

"And others! You don't imagine I confine myself to him?"

"Has Lady Coryston found out yet?"