all is!"

"Agreed! good-night."

And Wharton moved on, just catching as he did so the eyes of his new
girl acquaintance looking back at him from a distant door. Their shy
owner withdrew them instantly, coloured, and passed out of sight.

At the same moment a guest entered by the same door, a tall grave man in
the prime of life, but already grey haired. Wharton, to his surprise,
recognised Aldous Raeburn, and saw also that the master of the house had
him by the arm. They came towards him, talking. The crowd prevented him
from getting effectually out of their way, but he turned aside and took
up a magazine lying on a bookcase near.

"And you really think him a trifle better?" said the ex-minister.

"Oh, yes, better--certainly better--but I am afraid he will hardly get
back to work this session--the doctors talk of sending him away at
once."

"Ah, well," said the other, smiling, "we don't intend it seems to let
you send anything important up to the Lords yet awhile, so there will be
time for him to recruit."

"I wish I was confident about the recruiting," said Raeburn, sadly. "He
has lost much strength. I shall go with them to the Italian lakes at the
end of next week, see them settled and come back at once."

"Shall you miss a sitting of the commission?" asked his host. Both he
and Raeburn were members of an important Labour Commission appointed the
year before by the new Conservative government.

"Hardly, I think," said Raeburn, "I am particularly anxious not to miss
D----'s evidence."

And they fell talking a little about the Commission and the witnesses
recently examined before it. Wharton, who was wedged in by a group of
ladies, and could not for the moment move, heard most of what they were
saying, much against his will. Moreover Raeburn's tone of quiet and
masterly familiarity with what he and his companion were discussing
annoyed him. There was nothing in the world that he himself would more
eagerly have accepted than a seat on that Commission.

"Ah! there is Lady Cradock!" said Raeburn, perceiving his hostess across
a sea of intervening faces, and responding to her little wave of the
hand. "I must go and get a few words with her, and then take my aunt
away."

As he made his way towards her, he suddenly brushed against Wharton, who
could not escape. Raeburn looked up, recognised the man he had touched,
flushed slightly and passed on. A bystander would have supposed them
strangers to each other.