about Quisante, and was not disposed of by
observing that the unfavourable Minister belonged to that "old gang"
which it was Quisante's mission to shake up or shake out. Rich in merits,
his speeches were nevertheless faulty to a critical ear; the ornate was
apt to turn to the gaudy, the dignified to the pompous. To the critical,
defects outweigh merits; but the mass of people, not being critical, fix
on the fine things, contentedly and perhaps not unwisely ignoring the
blemishes. So the speech was a great popular success, and Alexander
Quisante conceived that he had more than justified his reputation and had
ornamented his Lady's colours with the laurel of victory. He wrote to her
to say that he was staying a few days in Lancashire and had arranged to
speak at one or two other places. "If I do at all well," he wrote, "it is
because I forget my audience and think that I speak only to you and to
earn the praise of your eyes."

"Oh, dear, why does he talk like that?" said May Gaston with a sigh and a
smile. "Forget his audience! The praise of my eyes!" She read the
compliment over again almost despairingly. "Yet he doesn't really think
me an idiot," she ended. She had made up her mind to forgive him his
habit of playing to the gallery, but he need not treat her as though she
sat there. She felt able to understand the dumb and bewildered reproach
which fronted her in her sister Fanny's face, but found spoken expression
only in the news that Fanny had had a letter from Lady Richard.

The next day she went to see Miss Quisante; the paying of this visit had
been in her mind from the first moment she left Ashwood. In the little
flat's narrow passage she had to squeeze by a short, stout, dark man,
dressed with much elaboration; Miss Quisante explained afterwards that he
was a sort of cousin of her own and Sandro's.

"His name is Mandeville," she said. "His father's was Isaacs. You knew we
had Jewish relations?"

"I thought it not improbable."

"I suppose we've got some of the blood, and some of it's a very good
thing," pursued Aunt Maria. "This man's a stock-jobber; he came to talk
to me about my money, but he let out a thing or two about Sandro."

"About Mr. Quisante?"

"Yes. Well, I'm not surprised; I never am surprised at Sandro. Only if he
speculates with my money I shan't give it him."

May listened and heard how Quisante had embarked the five hundred pounds
given him to support his new position in a hazardous, alt