s the grass. Marsham dropped the newspaper, retaining
Broadstone's letter.

"Sir James wished me to leave him a little," she said, brokenly. "The
ambulance will be here directly. They will take him to Lytchett. I
thought it should have been Tallyn. But Sir James decided it."

"Mother!"--Marsham moved toward her, reluctantly--"here is a letter--no
doubt of importance. And--it is addressed to you."

Lady Lucy gave a little cry. She looked at the pencilled address, with
quivering lips; then she opened the envelope, and on the back of the
closely written letter she saw at once Ferrier's last words to her.

Marsham, moved by a son's natural impulse, stooped and kissed her hair.
He drew a chair forward, and she sank into it with the letter. While she
was reading it he raised the _Herald_ again, unobserved, folded it up
hurriedly, and put it in his pocket; then walked away a few steps, that
he might leave his mother to her grief. Presently Lady Lucy called him.

"Oliver!" The voice was strong. He went back to her and she received him
with sparkling eyes, her hand on Broadstone's letter.

"Oliver, this is what killed him! Lord Broadstone must bear the
responsibility."

And hurriedly, incoherently, she explained that the letter from Lord
Broadstone was an urgent appeal to Ferrier's patriotism and to his
personal friendship for the writer; begging him for the sake of party
unity, and for the sake of the country, to allow the Prime Minister to
cancel the agreement of the day before; to accept a peerage and the War
Office in lieu of the Exchequer and the leadership of the House. The
Premier gave a full account of the insurmountable difficulties in the
way of the completion of the Government, which had disclosed themselves
during the course of the afternoon and evening following his interview
with Ferrier. Refusals of the most unexpected kind, from the most
unlikely quarters; letters and visits of protest from persons impossible
to ignore--most of them, no doubt, engineered by Lord Philip; "finally
the newspapers of this morning--especially the article in the _Herald_,
which you will have seen before this reaches you--all these, taken
together, convince me that if I cannot persuade you to see the matter in
the same light as I do--and I know well that, whether you accept or
refuse, you will put the public advantage first--I must at once inform
her Majesty that my attempt to construct a Government has broken down."

Marsham fo