eel it incumbent upon myself," Cardington said, "to confess that I
gave Mr. Emmet my careful consideration this evening, during the
moments I could spare from a contemplation of our Chief Executive, and
I must say that I found him the more interesting study of the two. I
began to demolish my earlier views, or prejudices, and to build up a
new opinion of the man. Fairness compels me to admit that I got a
different conception of his possibilities. As I sat looking at him,
expecting to see every sign of demoralisation in his aspect, I began to
perceive that he by no means regarded himself down and out for good, if
you will allow the sporting phrase. Mr. Emmet was fooled this time,
but he will not be fooled again. I thought I could see that he had
learned his lesson well, and if I were Mr. Anthony Cobbens, I should
feel the stirring of a very considerable doubt as to the ultimate
outcome of the struggle to which he has now committed himself. Perhaps
he has provoked a jinnee in that young man which will one day rise up
and envelop him in a cloud of political suffocation. Don't you think
so, Miss Felicity?"

He looked at her inquiringly, anticipating her acquiescence. In his
expression the ideal and impersonal quality that constituted his
peculiar charm was now apparent, and suggested an inward exaltation, as
if he had gained a victory over himself and had made an honourable
amend. Leigh, watching her with tense emotion, saw that she was deeply
impressed, and he seemed to read the record of her thoughts in the
shadows that came and went within her eyes. She was weighing her
husband's qualities and possibilities in the scales of this unexpected
opinion, and the decision hung suspended in the balance. As he divined
her secret struggle and realised that she might go back to the man who
did not love her, who wished to use her for his own advancement, he
suffered an agony of jealousy that was well-nigh insupportable.

For a few moments she delayed to answer, toying with her fork in
thoughtful abstraction. In fact, her love for the young astronomer
beside her was contending with the old desire to control her husband
and to make him a figure in the world. In the inmost recesses of her
heart she knew that she no longer loved Emmet, and that they could
never wholly meet. What she did not, perhaps, so frankly own was the
fact that she had found too late the man she could have loved and for
whom she should have waited. W