temptuously showed his dear Crusade the door?

"I want Sir Winterton to win," said Mrs. Baxter with mild firmness.

"Oh, I say!" murmured Jimmy, who was very ready to be made to feel
uncomfortable. "Come now, why, Mrs. Baxter?"

Mrs. Baxter shook her head, and went on knitting the stocking which on
journeys took the place of the wonted petticoat.

"My wife's taken a prejudice against Mr. Quisante," the Dean explained
apologetically.

"A prejudice!" said Mrs. Baxter with a patient withering smile; she
implied that her husband would be calling religion and the virtues
prejudices next.

"There's nothing particularly wrong with him," Jimmy protested weakly.

"There's nothing particularly right with him, Lord James. He's just like
that coachman of the Girdlestones'; he never told the truth and never
cleaned his harness, but, bless you, there was always a good reason for
it. What became of the man, Dan?"

"I don't know, my dear."

"I remember. They had to get rid of him, and the Canon got him made
night-watchman at the Institute. However, as I say, I called him Mr.
Reasons, and that's what I call Alexander Quisante. Poor girl!" The last
words referred, by a somewhat abrupt transition, to Quisante's wife.

The Dean smiled rather uneasily at Jimmy Benyon; Mrs. Baxter detected the
smile, but was not disturbed. She shook her head again, saying,

"Sir Winterton you can trust, but if I were he I'd keep a sharp eye on
all you Quisante people."

"I say, hang it all!" moaned Jimmy Benyon. But his protest could not
soften the old lady's convinced hostility. "You ask his aunt," she ended
vindictively, and Jimmy was too timid to suggest that enquiries in such a
quarter were not the usual way of forming a judgment on rising statesmen.

Moreover he had no opportunity, for Miss Quisante did not come to
Henstead; her explanation showed the mixture of malice and devotion which
was her usual attitude towards Sandro.

"I'd give my ears to come," she had told May, "to see the fun and hear
Sandro. But I'm old and ugly and scrubby, and Sandro won't want me. I'm
not a swell like you and your sister. I should do him harm, not good.
He'd be ashamed of me--oh, that'd only amuse me. But I'd best not come.
Write to me, my dear, and send me all his speeches."

"I wish you'd come. I want you to talk to," May said.

"Talk to your sister!" jeered Aunt Maria; it was nothing less than a
jeer, for she knew very well that May could not and wou