done well here. Your public
men say agreeable things of him. He will play your English game--your
English Imperialist game--which I can't play. But only, if he is
happy--if the fire in him is fed. Consider! Is it not a patriotic duty
to feed it?"

And grasping her hand, he looked at her with a gentle mockery that
passed immediately into that sudden seriousness--that unconscious air of
command--of which the man of interior life holds the secret. In his
jests even, he is still, by natural gift, the confessor, the director,
since he sees everything as the mystic sees it, _sub specie
aeternitatis_.

Elizabeth's soft colour came and went. But she made no reply--except it
were through an imperceptible pressure of the hand holding her own.

At that moment the ex-Viceroy, resplendent in his ribbon of the Garter,
who was passing through the hall, perceived her, pounced upon her, and
insisted on seeing her to her carriage. Mariette, as he mounted the
staircase, watched the two figures disappear--smiling to himself.

But on the way home the cloud of sisterly grief descended on
Elizabeth. How could she think of herself--when Philip was
ill--suffering--threatened? And how would he bear the news of
Anderson's hastened departure?

As soon as she reached home, she was told by the sleepy butler that Mrs.
Gaddesden was in the drawing-room, and that Mr. Anderson was still
upstairs with Philip.

As she entered the drawing-room, her mother came running towards her
with a stifled cry:

"Oh, Lisa, Lisa!"

In terror, Elizabeth caught her mother in her arms.

"Mother--is he worse?"

"No! At least Barnett declares to me there is no real change. But he has
made up his mind, to-day, that he will never get better. He told me so
this evening, just after you had gone; and Barnett could not satisfy
him. He has sent for Mr. Robson." Robson was the family lawyer.

The two women looked at one another in a pale despair. They had reached
the moment when, in dealing with a sick man, the fictions of love drop
away, and the inexorable appears.

"And now he'll break his heart over Mr. Anderson's going!" murmured the
mother, in an anguish. "I didn't want him to see Philip to-night--but
Philip heard his ring--and sent down for him."

They sat looking at each other, hand in hand--waiting--and listening.
Mrs. Gaddesden murmured a broken report of the few words of conversation
which rose now, like a blank wall, between all the past, and this
pres