by Skepsey, who wriggled, tore and clove a way for them, where all were
obedient, but the numbers lumped and clogged. When finally they reached
the stage, they spied at Nesta's box, during the thunder of the rounds
of applause, after shaking hands with Mr. Dubbleson, Sir Abraham
Quatley, Dudley Sowerby, and others; and with Beaves Urmsing--a
politician 'never of the opposite party to a deuce of a funny
fellow!--go anywhere to hear him,' he vowed.

'Miss Radnor and Mademoiselle de Seilles arrived quite safely,' said
Dudley, feasting on the box which contained them and no Dartrey Fenellan
in it.

Nesta was wondering at Dartrey's absence. Not before Mr. Dubbleson, the
chairman, the 'gentleman of local influence,' had animated the drowsed
wits and respiratory organs of a packed audience by yielding place to
Simeon, did Dartrey appear. Simeon's name was shouted, in proof of
the happy explosion of his first anecdote, as Dartrey took seat behind
Nesta. 'Half an hour with the dear mother,' he said.

Nesta's eyes thanked him. She pressed the hand of a demure young woman
sitting close behind. Louise de Seilles. 'You know Matilda Pridden.'

Dartrey held his hand out. 'Has she forgiven me?'

Matilda bowed gravely, enfolding her affirmative in an outline of the
no need for it, with perfect good breeding. Dartrey was moved to think
Skepsey's choice of a woman to worship did him honour. He glanced at
Louise. Her manner toward Matilda Pridden showed her sisterly with
Nesta. He said: 'I left Mr. Peridon playing.--A little anxiety to hear
that the great speech of the evening is done; it's nothing else. I'll
run to her as soon as it's over.'

'Oh, good of you! And kind of Mr. Peridon!' She turned to Louise, who
smiled at the simple art of the exclamation, assenting.

Victor below, on the stage platform, indicated the waving of a hand
to them, and his delight at Simeon's ringing points: which were, to
Dartrey's mind, vacuously clever and crafty. Dartrey despised effects
of oratory, save when soldiers had to be hurled on a mark--or citizens
nerved to stand for their country.

Nesta dived into her father's brilliancy of appreciation, a trifle
pained by Dartrey's aristocratic air when he surveyed the herd of heads
agape and another cheer rang round. He smiled with her, to be with her,
at a hit here and there; he would not pretend an approval of this manner
of winning electors to consider the country's interests and their own.
One f