"Of course; but you know I want you to do it well." She paused an
instant and then: "Of course you can send the bill to me."

"Thanks awfully; you're tremendously kind. I shouldn't think of that."
Nick Dormer got up as he spoke, and walked to the window again, his
companion's eyes resting on him while he stood with his back to her. "I
shall manage it somehow," he wound up.

"Mr. Carteret will be delighted," said Julia.

"I daresay, but I hate taking people's money."

"That's nonsense--when it's for the country. Isn't it for _them_?"

"When they get it back!" Nick replied, turning round and looking for his
hat. "It's startlingly late; you must be tired." Mrs. Dallow made no
response to this, and he pursued his quest, successful only when he
reached a duskier corner of the room, to which the hat had been
relegated by his cousin's maid. "Mr. Carteret will expect so much if he
pays. And so would you."

"Yes, I'm bound to say I should! I should expect a great
deal--everything." And Mrs. Dallow emphasised this assertion by the way
she rose erect. "If you're riding for a fall, if you're only going in to
miss it, you had better stay out."

"How can I miss it with _you_?" the young man smiled. She uttered a
word, impatiently but indistinguishably, and he continued: "And even if
I do it will have been immense fun."

"It is immense fun," said Julia. "But the best fun is to win. If you
don't----!"

"If I don't?" he repeated as she dropped.

"I'll never speak to you again."

"How much you expect even when you don't pay!"

Mrs. Dallow's rejoinder was a justification of this remark, expressing
as it did the fact that should they receive on the morrow information on
which she believed herself entitled to count, information tending to
show how hard the Conservatives meant to fight, she should look to him
to be in the field as early as herself. Sunday was a lost day; she
should leave Paris on Monday.

"Oh they'll fight it hard; they'll put up Kingsbury," said Nick,
smoothing his hat. "They'll all come down--all that can get away. And
Kingsbury has a very handsome wife."

"She's not so handsome as your cousin," Julia smiled.

"Oh dear, no--a cousin sooner than a wife any day!" Nick laughed as soon
as he had said this, as if the speech had an awkward side; but the
reparation perhaps scarcely mended it, the exaggerated mock-meekness
with which he added: "I'll do any blessed thing you tell me."

"Come here to-morrow t