"Ah, my dear, you have read the Standard too. So have I. Have you not any opinion of your own?"
"Yes; he is on the edge of a precipice."
Lady Ardingly's decorative hand paused.
"And what is the precipice?" she asked. "You have not forgotten our talk, I see."
Mildred lost patience a little.
"Your advice, you mean," she said.
"My advice, if you prefer. I am so glad you have been behaving with such good sense. And as for Jack's speech, I tell you frankly I was astonished with delight. He seems to me to have hit exactly the right note, and he is in the middle of the right note, like Guardina when she sings. I consider him as having the ball at his feet. He has sprung to the front at a bound. Now his supporters will push him along. He has only got to keep greatly en évidence, and he need do nothing more till the first meeting of the Cabinet."
"Has his speech done all that for him?" asked Mildred.
"Yes, certainly, for it is the speech of a man of action, of whom there are fewer in England than the fingers on my hand. He told his audience that speeches are not in his line. That is immensely taking, when at the time he was making a really magnificent one. Yes, Jack is assured, if only you are careful," she added in French, which, if considered a precautionary measure against her maid's comprehension, was not a very tactful move, since the latter was a Frenchwoman.