ld not talk to
Fanny.

One thing the Quisante people (as Mrs. Baxter called them) found out
before they had been long in Henstead, and this was the important and
delicate nature of anything and everything that touched or affected Mr.
Japhet Williams. Something of this had been foreshadowed by Mr. Foster's
account of his friend, but the reality went far beyond. Japhet was a
small fretful-faced man; he was rich, liberal, and kind, but he plumed
himself on a scrupulous conscience and was the slave of a trifle-ridden
mind. As a member of a party, then, he was hard to work with, harder even
than Weston Marchmont, of whom he seemed sometimes to May to be a reduced
and travestied copy. Not a speech could be made, not a bill issued, but
Japhet Williams flew round to the Committee Room with an objection to
urge and a hole to pick. There he would find large, stout, shrewd old
Foster, installed in an arm-chair and ready with native diplomacy, or
Quisante himself, earning Mrs. Baxter's nickname of "Mr. Reasons" by the
suave volubility of his explanations. May laughed at such scenes
half-a-dozen times in the first week of her stay at Henstead.

"Is he so very important to us?" she asked of Foster.

He answered her in a whisper behind a fat hand,

"His house is only a couple of miles from Sir Winterton's, and Lady
Mildmay's been civil. He employs a matter of two hundred men up at the
mills yonder."

"The position's very critical, isn't it, then?"

"So your good husband seems to think," said Foster, jerking his thumb
towards where Quisante leant over Japhet's shoulder, almost caressing
him, and ingeniously justifying the statistics of an electioneering
placard. May's eyes followed the direction of the jerk. She sighed.

"Yes, it's a waste of Mr. Quisante's time, but we can't help that,"
Foster sighed responsively. It was not, however, of Quisante's time that
his wife had been thinking.

Japhet rose. Quisante took his hand, shook it, and held it.

"Now you're satisfied, really satisfied, Mr. Williams?" he asked. "I give
you my word that what I've said is absolutely accurate."

"What that placard says, sir?"

"Yes, yes, certainly--what the placard says. It doesn't give the details
and explanations, of course, but the results are accurately stated."

"I'm much relieved to hear it, much relieved," said Japhet.

He left them; Foster sat down again, smiling. May had come to drive her
husband to a meeting and waited his leisur