lt dismally that the
spark might come at any moment from some unlooked-for quarter of the
globe. He ran over in his mind the position of foreign affairs. All
seemed vaguely safe; and yet he was conscious that all was vaguely
unsettled. The world was on the eve of one of its cyclic changes, and
unrest seemed to make the air murky.

He tried to be polite and listened attentively to the lady on his right,
who was telling him the latest gossip about a certain famous marriage.
But his air was so manifestly artificial that she turned to the
presumably more attractive topic of his doings.

"You look ill," she said--she was one who adopted the motherly air
towards young men, which only a pretty woman can use. "Are they
over-working you in the House?"

"Pretty fair," and he smiled grimly. "But really I can't complain. I
have had eight hours' sleep in the last four days, and I don't think
Beauregard could say as much. Some day I shall break loose and go to a
quiet place and sleep for a week. Brittany would do--or Scotland."

"I was in Scotland last week," she said. "I didn't find it quiet. It
was at one of those theatrical Highland houses where they pipe you to
sleep and pipe you to breakfast. I used to have to sit up all night by
the fire and read Marius the Epicurean, to compose myself. Did you ever
try the specific?"

"No," he said, laughing. "I always soothe my nerves with Blue-books."

She made a mouth at the thought. "And do you know I met such a nice man
up there, who said you were a great friend of his? His name was
Haystoun."

"Do you remember his Christian name?" he asked.

"Lewis," she said without hesitation.

He laughed. "He is a man who should only have one name and that his
Christian one. I never heard him called 'Haystoun' in my life. How is
he?"

"He seemed well, but he struck me as being at rather a loose end. What
is wrong with him? You know him well and can tell me. He seems to have
nothing to do; to have fallen out of his niche, you know. And he looks
so extraordinarily clever."

"He _is_ extraordinarily clever. But if I undertook to tell you what
was wrong with Lewie Haystoun, I should never get to the House to-night.
The vitality of a great family has run to a close in him. He is strong
and able, and yet, unless the miracle of miracles happens, he will never
do anything. Two hundred years ago he might have led some mad Jacobite
plot to success. Three hundred and he might have been another Rale