es not admit of outside interference, however
kindly. Besides, the boy is right. I wilfully deserted both him and
his mother, and she died during my absence. My life, whilst away from
them, was the sort one forgets--or tries to--and he knows about it.
Further, when I returned to England I was two years before I took the
trouble to go and see him. I merely alluded to these domestic matters
that you might not wholly misjudge the situation."

Mr. Hennibul went on with his supper in silence. Lord Arranmore.
whose appetite had soon failed him, leaned back in his chair and watched
the people in the further room.

"This rather puts me off politics," he remarked, after a while. "I
don't like the look of the people."

"Oh, you'll get in for the select crushers," Mr. Hennibul said. "This
is a rank and file affair. You mustn't judge by appearances. But why
must you specialize? Take my advice. Don't go in specially for
politics, or society, or sport. Mix them all up. Be cosmopolitan and
commonplace."

"Upon my word, Hennibul, you are a genius," Arranmore declared, "and
yonder goes my good fairy."

He sprang up and disappeared into the further room.

"Lady Caroom," he exclaimed, bending over her shoulder. "I never
suspected it of you."

She started slightly--she was silent perhaps for the fraction of a
second. Then she looked up with a bright smile, meeting him on his own
ground.

"But of you," she cried, "it is incredible. Come at once and explain."

CHAPTER V

BROOKS ENLISTS A RECRUIT

Brooks had found a small restaurant in the heart of fashionable London,
where the appointments and decorations were French, and the waiters were
not disposed to patronize. Of the cooking neither he nor Mary Scott in
those days was a critic. Nevertheless she protested against the length
of the dinner which he ordered.

"I want an excuse," he declared, laying down the carte, "for a good long
chat. We shall be too late for the theatre, so we may as well resign
ourselves to an hour or so of one another's society."

She shook her head.

"A very apt excuse for unwarrantable greediness," she declared. "Surely
we can talk without eating?"

He shook his head.

"You do not smoke, and you do not drink liqueurs," he remarked. "Now I
have noticed that it is simply impossible for one to sit before an empty
table after dinner and not feel that one ought to go. Let the waiter
take your cape. You will find the room warm.

"Do you remember