hink you don't know my younger daughter, Mr. Wharton?" said a severe
voice at his elbow.

He turned and saw an elderly matron with the usual matronly cap and
careworn countenance putting forward a young thing in white, to whom he
bowed with great ceremony. The lady was the wife of a north-country
magnate of very old family, and one of the most exclusive of her kind in
London. The daughter, a vision of young shyness and bloom, looked at him
with frightened eyes as he leant against the wall beside her and began
to talk. She wished he would go away and let her get to the girl friend
who was waiting for her and signalling to her across the room. But in a
minute or two she had forgotten to wish anything of the kind. The
mixture of audacity with a perfect self-command in the manner of her new
acquaintance, that searching half-mocking look, which saw everything in
detail, and was always pressing beyond the generalisations of talk and
manners, the lightness and brightness of the whole aspect, of the curls,
the eyes, the flexible determined mouth, these things arrested her. She
began to open her virgin heart, first in protesting against attack, then
in confession, till in ten minutes her white breast was heaving under
the excitement of her own temerity and Wharton knew practically all
about her, her mingled pleasure and remorse in "going out," her
astonishment at the difference between the world as it was this year,
and the world as it had been last, when she was still in the
school-room--her Sunday-school--her brothers--her ideals--for she was a
little nun at heart--her favourite clergyman--and all the rest of it.

"I say, Wharton, come and dine, will you, Thursday, at the House--small
party--meet in my room?"

So said one of the party whips, from behind into his ear. The speaker
was a popular young aristocrat who in the preceding year had treated the
member for West Brookshire with chilliness. Wharton turned--to consider
a moment--then gave a smiling assent.

"All right!" said the other, withdrawing his hand from Wharton's
shoulder--"good-night!--two more of these beastly crushes to fight
through till I can get to my bed, worse luck! Are any of your fellows
here to-night?"

Wharton shook his head.

"Too austere, I suppose?"

"A question of dress coats, I should think," said Wharton, drily.

The other shrugged his shoulders.

"And this calls itself a party gathering--in a radical and democratic
house--what a farce it