"It shall be as you say," he answered. "I wonder if all London is as excited to-night as the crowd we have just left."
"To me," she murmured, "London seems always imperturbable, stonily indifferent to good or evil. I believe that on the eve of a revolution we should dine and go to the theatre, choose our houses at which to spend the evening, and avoid sweet champagne with the same care. You and I may know that to-night England has thrown overboard a national policy. Yet I doubt whether either of us will sleep the less soundly."
"Not only that," he said, "but the Government have to-day shown themselves possessed of a penetration and appreciation of mind for which I for one scarcely gave them credit. They have made me a peer."
She looked at him with an amused smile.
"They make judges and peers for two reasons" she remarked.
"That, Lady Caroom, is unkind," he said. "I can assure you that throughout my career I have never made a nuisance of myself to any one. In the House I have been a model member, and I have always obeyed my whip in fear and trembling. At the Bar I have been mildness itself. The /St. James's Gazette/ speaks of my urbanity, and the courtesy with which I have always conducted the most arduous cross-examination. You should read the /St. James's Gazette/, Lady Caroom. I do not know the biographical editor, but it is easy to predict a future for him. He has common-sense and insight. The paragraph about myself touched me. I have cut it out, and I mean to keep it always with me."
"The Press," she said, "have all those things cut and dried. No doubt if you made friends with that young man he would let you read your obituary notice. I have a friend who has corrected the proofs of his already."
Hennibul smiled.
"My cousin Avenal, the police magistrate," he said, "actually read his in the Times. He was bathing at Jersey and was carried away by currents, and picked up by a Sark fishing-smack. They took him to Sark, and he was so charmed with his surroundings and the hospitality of the people that he quite forgot to let anybody know where he was. When he read his obituary notice he almost decided to remain dead. He declared that it was quite impossible to live up to it."
"Our charity now-a-days," she remarked, "always begins with the dead."