an Oxford man, who seemed on excellent terms with
every one. It was manifest that he was in the habit of sparring with the
girl, but on this occasion she wasn't sparring and refused to be teased
into a display in spite of the taunts of either him or her father. She
was, they discovered with rising eyebrows, shy. It seemed an opportunity
too rare for them to miss. They proclaimed her enthusiasm for me in a
way that brought a flush to her cheek and a look into her eye between
appeal and defiance. They declared she had read my books, which I
thought at the time was exaggeration, their dry political quality was so
distinctly not what one was accustomed to regard as schoolgirl reading.
Miss Gamer protested to protect her, "When once in a blue moon Isabel is
well-behaved....!"

Except for these attacks I do not remember much of the conversation
at table; it was, I know, discursive and concerned with the sort of
topographical and social and electioneering fact natural to such a
visit. Old Rivers struck me as a delightful person, modestly unconscious
of his doubly-earned V. C. and the plucky defence of Kardin-Bergat that
won his baronetcy. He was that excellent type, the soldier radical, and
we began that day a friendship that was only ended by his death in the
hunting-field three years later. He interested Margaret into a disregard
of my plate and the fact that I had secured the illegal indulgence of
Moselle. After lunch we went for coffee into another low room, this
time brown panelled and looking through French windows on a red-walled
garden, graceful even in its winter desolation. And there the
conversation suddenly picked up and became good. It had fallen to a
pause, and the doctor, with an air of definitely throwing off a mask
and wrecking an established tranquillity, remarked: "Very probably you
Liberals will come in, though I'm not sure you'll come in so mightily as
you think, but what you do when you do come in passes my comprehension."

"There's good work sometimes," said Sir Graham, "in undoing."

"You can't govern a great empire by amending and repealing the Acts of
your predecessors," said the doctor.

There came that kind of pause that happens when a subject is broached
too big and difficult for the gathering. Margaret's blue eyes regarded
the speaker with quiet disapproval for a moment, and then came to me in
the not too confident hope that I would snub him out of existence with
some prompt rhetorical stroke.