"Whom do you talk to?" he asked curiously.
"About 'we'? I talk to Miss Quisanté—You've met her? She's never tired of talking about 'we'—though she doesn't like us; but she doesn't care a bit to talk about me."
"Have a confidante," he suggested gravely.
"Yes—like Tilburina. Who shall I have?"
A run through their acquaintance suggested only Mrs. Gellatly, and her May rejected as being too suitable, too much the traditional confidante. "I should like one who might possibly have something to tell me in return, and she never could," she said.
They were interrupted by the arrival of the man of whom they had spoken, Constantine Blair. He came with important and, as he clearly considered, disquieting news for Quisanté. Sir Winterton Mildmay, one of the richest landowners near Henstead, who had been at loggerheads with his party, had made up the quarrel and consented to stand in opposition to Quisanté. "I thought the sooner your husband knew the better," said Constantine with a very grave face. "It makes a difference, you see. We only beat young Fortescue, a stranger in the town, by two hundred, and they had four hundred the time before." He paused and added, "Lady Mildmay's very much liked in the town."
"Come, Blair, I'm sure we shan't be worse off in that respect anyhow," said Marchmont, laughing.
"Oh, I've nothing to do with you, I've given you up," cried Blair, twisting his good-humoured face into a fierce scowl. "He's a man with convictions, Lady May; he's no sort of use to me."
Blair had convictions himself, but he and everybody else took them so much for granted that they might almost as well not have existed; they were polite convictions too, ready to give place not only to one another but even to circumstances, and waiting quite patiently their turn to be realised. He expected to be met in a like spirit, conceiving that the true function of a man's own opinions is to decide which party he shall belong to; with that decision their duty was ended. He possessed an extremely cordial manner, dressed perfectly, and never forgot anybody. He enjoyed his work immensely, quarrelling with nothing in it save that it often prevented him from being present at the first performances of new plays. May thought him pleasant, but did not welcome his appearance to-day; he smacked too strongly of those politics distinctively practical from which her talk with Marchmont had afforded a temporary escape.
"I know Mildmay," said Marchmont. "He's a capital fellow and, I should think, very popular. He'll give you a bit of a run."