uished their torches,
still capped its grim iron railings.

Seated in the great, sombre library, Joan hazarded the suggestion. Mrs.
Denton might almost have been waiting for it. It would be quite easy. A
little opening of long fastened windows; a lighting of chill grates; a
little mending of moth-eaten curtains, a sweeping away of long-gathered
dust and cobwebs.

Mrs. Denton knew just the right people. They might be induced to bring
their sons and daughters--it might be their grandchildren, youth being
there to welcome them. For Joan, of course, would play her part.

The lonely woman touched her lightly on the hand. There shot a pleading
look from the old stern eyes.

"You will have to imagine yourself my daughter," she said. "You are
taller, but the colouring was the same. You won't mind, will you?"

The right people did come: Mrs. Denton being a personage that a landed
gentry, rendered jumpy by the perpetual explosion of new ideas under
their very feet, and casting about eagerly for friends, could not afford
to snub. A kindly, simple folk, quite intelligent, some of them, as
Phillips had surmised. Mrs. Denton made no mystery of why she had
invited them. Why should all questions be left to the politicians and
the journalists? Why should not the people interested take a hand; meet
and talk over these little matters with quiet voices and attentive ears,
amid surroundings where the unwritten law would restrain ladies and
gentlemen from addressing other ladies and gentlemen as blood-suckers or
anarchists, as grinders of the faces of the poor or as oily-tongued
rogues; arguments not really conducive to mutual understanding and the
bridging over of differences. The latest Russian dancer, the last new
musical revue, the marvellous things that can happen at golf, the curious
hands that one picks up at bridge, the eternal fox, the sacred bird!
Excellent material for nine-tenths of our conversation. But the
remaining tenth? Would it be such excruciatingly bad form for us to be
intelligent, occasionally; say, on one or two Fridays during the season?
Mrs. Denton wrapped it up tactfully; but that was her daring suggestion.

It took them aback at first. There were people who did this sort of
thing. People of no class, who called themselves names and took up
things. But for people of social standing to talk about serious
subjects--except, perhaps, in bed to one's wife! It sounded so
un-English.

With the el