is future seems to me very doubtful. He can
only become a power as the head of a new Labour party. But where is the
party? They all want to be kings. The best point in his favour is that
they are likely enough to take a gentleman if they must have a leader.
But there still remains the question whether he can make anything out of
the material."

"I hope to God he can't!" said the old general, grimly; "it is these
town-chatterers of yours that will bring the Empire about our heads
before we've done. They've begun it already, wherever they saw a
chance."

* * * * *

In the drawing-room Wharton devoted himself for a few minutes to his
hostess, a little pushing woman, who confided to his apparently
attentive ear a series of grievances as to the bad manners of the great
ladies of their common party, and the general evil plight of Liberalism
in London from the social point of view.

"Either they give themselves airs--_rediculous_ airs!--or they admit
everybody!" she said, with a lavish use of white shoulders and scarlet
fan by way of emphasis. "My husband feels it just as much as I do. It is
a real misfortune for the party that its social affairs should be so
villainously managed. Oh! I dare say _you_ don't mind, Mr. Wharton,
because you are a Socialist. But, I assure you, those of us who still
believe in the influence of the best people don't like it."

A point whence Wharton easily led her through a series of spiteful
anecdotes bearing on her own social mishaps and rebuffs, which were none
the less illuminating because of the teller's anxious effort to give
them a dignified and disinterested air. Then, when neither she nor her
plight were any longer amusing, he took his leave, exchanging another
skirmishing word or two on the staircase with Lady Selina, who it
appeared was "going on" as he was, and to the same house.

In a few minutes his hansom landed him at the door of a great mansion
in Berkeley Square, where a huge evening party was proceeding, given by
one of those Liberal ladies whom his late hostess had been so freely
denouncing. The lady and the house belonged to a man who had held high
office in the late Administration.

As he made his way slowly to the top of the crowded stairs, the stately
woman in white satin and diamonds who was "receiving" on the landing
marked him, and when his name was announced she came forward a step or
two. Nothing could have been more flattering than