. That's why it's
so important that Mary should be----"

"Reasonable?" suggested Dick.

"Well, yes," said Lord Eynesford.

"How does Perry take it?"

"Oh, I don't think he minds much. He thinks Medland's gang will soon
fall to pieces and he'll come back. Besides, the K.C.M.G. softens the
blow."

"Ah! It's the cheap defence of nations now--_vice_ chivalry, out of
fashion," laughed Dick.

Hitherto Lord Eynesford and his wife had enjoyed their reign. Everything
had gone well. The Governor agreed heartily with the measures introduced
by Sir Robert Perry's ministry, and his relations with the members of
the government, and especially with its chief, had been based on
reciprocal liking and respect: they were most of them gentlemen and all
of them respectable men, and, what was hardly less important, their
wives and families had afforded no excuse for the exercise of Lady
Eynesford's somewhat fastidious nicety as to manners, or her distinctly
rigid scrutiny into morals. Under such conditions, the duty and the
inclinations of Government House went hand-in-hand. Suddenly, in the
midst of an apparently peaceful session, came what the Governor
considered an unhallowed combination between a discontented section of
Perry's party, and the Opposition under Medland's leadership. The result
was the defeat of the Government, the resignation of Sir Robert, and the
inevitability of Mr. Medland.

Entering the Legislative Assembly as the representative of an outlying
constituency, Medland had speedily made himself the spokesman of the
growing Labour Party, and now, after fifteen years of public life, and a
secret and subterranean struggle with the old middle-class element, was
established as the leader of a united party, so powerful in numbers that
the accession of some dozen deserters had placed it in a majority. Mr.
Coxon had led the revolt against Sir Robert Perry, and the Governor
disliked Coxon even more thoroughly than he distrusted Medland. Miss
Scaife said that Medland was the more dangerous, inasmuch as he was
sincere and impetuous, while Coxon was neither; but then, the Governor
would reply, Coxon was a snob, and Medland, if not exactly a gentleman
according to the ideas of Eton and Christchurch--and Lord Eynesford
adhered to these ideas--scorned a bad imitation where he could not
attain the reality, and by his simplicity and freedom from pretension
extorted the admission of good breeding. But why compare the men? He
woul