ght, contemptuously. "Let them
please me."

Her companion betrayed no eagerness to please her; and during the first
ten minutes at table he talked to Gwynne about the late elections.
Evidently, he too had emerged from the political fray triumphant. Isabel
sat like a stately picture by Reynolds, and after her slow gaze had
travelled over the dark full-length portraits of the kings and queens
that had honored Capheaton, it dropped to the more animated faces in the
foreground. The men were good-looking, with hardly an exception; judging
by their carriage they might all have been army men, but as every word
that floated to the head of the table was political, they possibly had
followed their successful host's example and adopted an equally
intermittent career. One or two of the women were almost as handsome as
Lady Victoria, with their superb figures, their complexions of claret
and snow, that blending of high breeding and warm palpitating humanity
one never sees outside of England. But others within Isabel's range were
too haggard for beauty, although one had a Burne-Jones face and her eyes
gazed beyond the company with an expression that made her seem pure
spirit; but she too looked tired, delicate, curiously overworked.

Opposite Isabel was a tall buxom young woman of the purest Saxon type,
who was talking amiably with the man on her right, and occasionally
shaking with deep and silent laughter; her intimate casual manner, her
slight movements, her accentuation, manifestly bred in the bone.
Suddenly it was borne in upon Isabel's always sensitive consciousness
that she was the only haughty and reserved person present, and she felt
provincial and laughed frankly at herself. The lady across the table
claiming the attention of the host, she turned to her own partner. Her
black eyelashes were long, and under their protecting shadow she swept a
glance at the card above the young man's plate. It was inscribed, "Lord
Hexam." She saw her opportunity and asked, ingenuously:

"How can you be a member of the House of Commons?"

He looked up from his fish and replied, somewhat cuttingly, "By
contesting a borough and getting elected."

"But I thought a peer could not be in the House of Commons."

"He can't."

"Then how can you be?"

"I am not a peer." He looked very much annoyed.

"But you are Lord Hexam."

He answered, sulkily: "I happen to be the son of a peer."

"Are you irritated because I know nothing about you?" ask