erals?" Sophy ventured.

He scowled, then grinned.

"Do I strike you as Conservative?" he asked.

"No--but your family----"

"Confound the family," he said cheerfully.

He took up his book again--a heavy volume on German politics, and Sophy
sat watching him quietly as she embroidered a collar for Bobby. She
wished with all her heart that he would "go in" actively for politics.
She felt that what he needed, perhaps most of all, was some steady,
vital interest and occupation. He was only thirty-three, and she had
heard from many people that much had been expected from him by men whose
opinion in such things mattered. Of course, his mother was furious at
his Radical tendencies and called him "turncoat" to his face, among
other terms as frank and equally harsh. He always met this with the
secretive smile that so enraged her. At twenty-seven his brilliant
series of articles, "The Liberalism of a Tory-Born," had been much
talked of. In them he showed originality, a singular grasp of matters
for so young a man, and, in addition, that perhaps most valuable gift
for the man who wishes to "arrive"--a tremendous power of conviction
that there is but one side to a question--the side on which he stands.
He saw the other side, of course, but he saw it as the side of the wave
which breaks--as froth.

There were people, however, who said that Cecil Chesney was "agin' the
Government" as he was against most facts that happened to be
established, that they had prophesied from the first that his "staying
power" was _nil_, and his brilliancy of the unstable, sky-rockety sort
that peters out in talk and scribbling. Certainly he had made an odd
_volte-face_, when he whipped about at twenty-eight and went off on that
exploring expedition to Africa.

Sophy was very ignorant about politics. She imagined that if Cecil only
chose, he could easily become a member of the House of Commons and make
a stir in that august and portly body. This innocent belief shows how
really and sincerely and extremely ignorant she was. But then she had
had few opportunities of information. The first year of her marriage had
been spent chiefly in learning how to adapt herself in some sort to her
eccentric, passionate husband, to the new characters and customs with
which she found herself surrounded, to the amazing difficulties of her
intercourse with Chesney's family. Lady Wychcote had been hostile to her
from the first. But Sophy had a gift of natural, fiery d