"No!" Lord Arranmore said, quietly. "I am obliged to you, Hennibul, but the matter is one which does not admit of outside interference, however kindly. Besides, the boy is right. I wilfully deserted both him and his mother, and she died during my absence. My life, whilst away from them, was the sort one forgets—or tries to—and he knows about it. Further, when I returned to England I was two years before I took the trouble to go and see him. I merely alluded to these domestic matters that you might not wholly misjudge the situation."
Mr. Hennibul went on with his supper in silence. Lord Arranmore. whose appetite had soon failed him, leaned back in his chair and watched the people in the further room.
"This rather puts me off politics," he remarked, after a while. "I don't like the look of the people."
"Oh, you'll get in for the select crushers," Mr. Hennibul said. "This is a rank and file affair. You mustn't judge by appearances. But why must you specialize? Take my advice. Don't go in specially for politics, or society, or sport. Mix them all up. Be cosmopolitan and commonplace."
"Upon my word, Hennibul, you are a genius," Arranmore declared, "and yonder goes my good fairy."
He sprang up and disappeared into the further room.
"Lady Caroom," he exclaimed, bending over her shoulder. "I never suspected it of you."
She started slightly—she was silent perhaps for the fraction of a second. Then she looked up with a bright smile, meeting him on his own ground.
"But of you," she cried, "it is incredible. Come at once and explain."