last. "It is thoughtless of me to keep you
out of your bed. You have had a weary night, I am sure. Was it the Irish
again, or the horrid teetotalers?"

"It was both, my dear," said he. "Phyllis," he added solemnly, "an Irish
teetotaler is a fearful thing."

"You shall forget all the intemperate teetotalers in a beautiful sleep,"
said she, putting her arms around his neck. "Good-night, papa! It was so
thoughtless of me to keep you up. It is one o'clock."

"It appears to me that you are the one who should be ready to succumb,"
said her father. "I had nothing to stimulate my imagination. Practical
politics has not yet discovered a good working reply to the man who
calls his fellow-man a liar, so the political outlook is not very
cheering."

"That is what is greatly needed: a satisfactory retort--verbal, of
course--to that every-day assertion."

"It has become the most potent influence in the House of Commons, during
the past year or two; and the worst of the matter is that the statement
is nearly always correct."

"Then there is all the greater need for a _modus vivendi_"--she had an
ample acquaintance with the jargon of diplomacy. "I don't despair of
Parliament being able to suggest an efficient retort."

"Parliament: two ragamuffins quarreling up an entry over a rotten
orange. Good-night, my child!"

She was at last in her own room: an apartment of gracious-tinted fabrics
and pink satin panels; of tapestried sofas made by French artists before
the lovely daughter of Maria Teresa went to her death. She switched on
the lights in the candle sconces, and threw herself down upon one of the
sofas. Her theater wrap and fan she had laid over a chair.

It was not to the drama which she had seen superbly acted at the
Parthenon that her thoughts went out; but to the words which her dearest
friend had spoken when driving back from the theater.

What words were they?

She could not recollect them now; but she was still conscious of the
impression which they had produced upon her while they were being
spoken. That impression was that up to that instant all the issues of
her life had been unworthy of a moment's consideration. She had taken
what she believed to be a deep interest in many matters during the five
years that she had been the head of her father's house. She had, she
knew, been of the greatest help to her father in his political life, not
merely turning her memory to good account in discovering the incautious
p