Square: a comfortable lady with a comfortable
income; a social stopper of chinks, moreover, kind and talkative; who
was always welcome on occasions when life was not too strenuous or the
company too critical. Marsham offered her his arm, and the little party
made its way to the dining-room.

* * * * *

"Do you go back to the House, Oliver, to-night?" asked his mother, as
the entree went round.

He replied in the affirmative, and resumed his conversation with Alicia.
She was teasing him on the subject of some of his Labor friends in the
House of Commons. It appeared that she had made the Curate, who was a
Christian Socialist, take her to a Labor Conference at Bristol, where
all the leaders were present, and her account of the proceedings and the
types was both amusing and malicious. It was the first time that Marsham
had known her attempt any conversation of the kind, and he recognized
that her cleverness was developing. But many of the remarks she made on
persons well known to him annoyed him extremely, and he could not help
trying to punish her for them. Alicia, however, was not easily punished.
She evaded him with a mosquito-like quickness, returning to the charge
as soon as he imagined himself to have scored with an irrelevance or an
absurdity which would have been exasperating in a man, but had somehow
to be answered and politely handled from a woman. He lost his footing
continually; and as she had none to lose, she had, on the whole, the
best of it.

[Illustration: "ALICIA UPRIGHT IN HER CORNER--OLIVER, DEEP IN HIS
ARMCHAIR"]

Then--in the very midst of it--he remembered, with a pang, another
skirmish, another battle of words--with another adversary, in a
different scene. The thrill of that moment in the Tallyn drawing-room,
when he had felt himself Diana's conqueror; delighting in her rosy
surrender, which was the mere sweet admission of a girl's limitations;
and in its implied appeal, timid and yet proud, to a victor who was also
a friend--all this he was conscious of, by association, while the
sparring with Alicia still went on. His tongue moved under the stimulus
of hers; but in the background of the mind rose the images and
sensations of the past.

Lady Lucy, meanwhile, looked on, well pleased. She had not seen Oliver
so cheerful, or so much inclined to talk, since "that unfortunate
affair," and she was proportionately grateful to Alicia.

Marsham returned to the drawin