ook hands with him, her
gesture still forbidding him to rise. Her face, a little flushed with
colour, bent down towards his and her voice was eager as she whispered,

"Good-night. Be simple, be yourself; it's worth while."

Then courage failed and she hurried off with a confused nervous farewell
to her friends. Her breath came quick as she lay back in the brougham
and closed her eyes.

Quisante was tired and ill; he was unusually quiet in his parting talk
with Lady Richard. Even she was sorry for him; and when pity entered
little Lady Richard's heart it drove out all other emotions however
strong, and routed all resolutions however well-founded.

"You look dead-beat, you do indeed," she said. She turned to her
husband. "Dick, Mr. Quisante must come and spend a few quiet days with
us in the country. Something'll happen to him, if he doesn't."

Dick could hardly believe his ears, and was full of delighted gratitude;
hitherto Lady Richard had been resolute that their country house at
least should be sacred from Quisante's feet. He took his wife's hand and
pressed it as he joyfully seconded her invitation. Some of Quisante's
effusive politeness displayed itself again, but still he was subdued,
and Lady Richard, full of her impulse of compassion, escaped without
realising fully the enormity of the step into which it had tempted her.

CHAPTER IV.

HE'S COMING!

Dick Benyon was a man of plentiful ideas, but he found great difficulty
in conveying them to others and even in expressing them to himself.
Jimmy, his faithful disciple, could not help him here, and indeed was too
much ashamed of harbouring such things as ideas to be of any service as
an apostle. All the ideas were not Dick's own; in the case of the
Imperial League, for example, he merely floated on the top of the
flood-tide of opinion, and even the Crusade, his other and dearer
pre-occupation, was the fruit of the Dean of St. Neot's brain as much as
or even more than of his own. The Dean never got the credit of having
ideas at all, first because he did not look like it, being short, stout,
ruddy, and apparently very fond of his dinner, secondly because he never
talked of his ideas to women. Mrs. Baxter did not care about ideas and
possibly the Dean generalised rashly. More probably, perhaps, he had
contracted a prejudice against talking confidentially to women from
observing the ways of some of h