"I didn't ask him. He asked himself. He is still mad about our Betty, but she flouts him. The Admiral wished it, as you know."
"And you," said Mark.
"I want the girl to be happy. And I shall be satisfied if she finds her peer outside the House of Lords. She has plenty of money and can marry whom she pleases."
For the second time that evening Mark's cheeks flamed.
"She beguiles all hearts," continued Lady Randolph, looking at Mark out of the corner of a shrewd grey eye; "Jim Corrance makes no secret of his feelings; and your handsome brother sang for her and at her—to-night. Somehow I can't conceive of her as the wife of, let us say, a bishop."
"There are bishops and bishops," said Mark.
"Just so. I am told that a certain person who has been labouring in a field which—which does not smell as one that the Lord hath blessed—may, if he continues to display his remarkable powers of organisation, wear lawn some day."
Then she spoke discreetly of other things, seeing that Mark's lips were quivering and his eyes shining; while the young man listened, hearing her pungent, pleasant phrases, but seeing only Betty—Betty—Betty!
Meantime that young lady had left the saloon accompanied by Pynsent, Kittling, and Jim Corrance. Mark could hear their voices in the room beyond, and Betty's voice, Betty's laugh, came clearly to his ears above the chorus, even as the silvery notes of a flute float upward from the clashing cymbals and roaring bassoons. Mark rose quickly and slipped away into the moonshine of the terrace.
For three years he had told himself daily that the woman he loved could never be his. Now—he drew a deep breath—she had come once more within his grasp. More, the world, in the person of his shrewd old friend, recognised that he, the failure, had not really failed, that he might have to give, even from the world's point of view, something worth the taking. And here, where material things possessed such significance, he could measure what he had accomplished with a detachment unachievable in Stepney. A thousand details presented themselves: a summons to the house of a great minister, an interview with a prince, who professed interest in the better housing of the poor, letters from celebrities asking for information, and his ever-increasing friendship with David Ross—now famous. The power of the orator had been denied him, and perhaps on that account he had been the keener to practise what otherwise he might have been content to preach.