rming girl."

"She talks politics, my dear lady, because living alone with her father
and with her books, she has had nothing else to talk about but politics
and books. Would you rather she talked scandal--or Monte Carlo?"

The Quaker in Lady Lucy laughed.

"Of course if she married Oliver, she would subordinate her opinions to
his."

"Would she!" said Mr. Ferrier--"I'm not so sure!"

Lady Lucy replied that if not, it would be calamitous. In which she
spoke sincerely. For although now the ruler, and, if the truth were
known, the somewhat despotic ruler of Tallyn, in her husband's lifetime
she had known very well how to obey.

"I have asked various people about the Mallorys," she resumed. "But
nobody seems to be able to tell me anything."

"I trace her to Sir Thomas of that ilk. Why not? It is a Welsh name!"

"I have no idea who her mother was," said Lady Lucy, musing. "Her father
was very refined--_quite_ a gentleman."

"She bears, I think, very respectable witness to her mother," laughed
Ferrier. "Good stock on both sides; she carries it in her face."

"That's all I ask," said Lady Lucy, quietly.

"But that you _do_ ask!" Her companion looked at her with an eye half
affectionate, half ironic. "Most exclusive of women! I sometimes wish I
might unveil your real opinions to the Radical fellows who come here."

Lady Lucy colored faintly.

"That has nothing to do with politics."

"Hasn't it? I can't imagine anything that has more to do with them."

"I was thinking of character--honorable tradition--not blood."

Ferrier shook his head.

"Won't do. Barton wouldn't pass you--'A man's a man for a' that'--and a
woman too."

"Then I am a Tory!" said Lady Lucy, with a smile that shot pleasantly
through her gray eyes.

"At last you confess it!" cried Ferrier, as he carried off his papers.
But his gayety soon departed. He stood awhile at the window in his room,
looking out upon the sodden park--a rather gray and sombre figure. Over
his ugly impressiveness a veil of weariness had dropped. Politics and
the strife of parties, the devices of enemies and the dissatisfaction of
friends--his soul was tired of them. And the emergence of this possible
love-affair--for the moment, ardent and deep as were the man's
affections and sympathies, toward this Marsham household, it did but
increase his sense of moral fatigue. If the flutter in the blood--and
the long companionship of equal love--if these were the only things of