"There's room on the front bench," cackled the Marquis, shaking his sides.
"Oh, I don't want you to roll off for him," said Miss Roan, who treated Ministerial Marquises with a contempt that bred in them a delightful sense of familiarity. "Tolshunt can sit opposite me—he's stared at the cricket long enough."
Tolshunt blushed with apparent irrelevance. But even the prospect of staring at Amber more comfortably did not reconcile him to displacement. "It's so awkward meeting a fellow who's had a tumble," he grumbled. "It's like having to condole with a man fresh from a funeral."
"There doesn't seem much black about Walter Bassett," Amber laughed. And at this moment—the dull end of a "maiden over"—the radiant personage in question turned his head, and perceiving Lady Chelmer's massive smile, acknowledged her recognition with respectful superiority, whereupon her Ladyship beckoned him with her best parasol manner.
"I want to introduce you to my friend, Miss Roan," she said, as he climbed to her side.
"I've been reading so much about you," said that young lady, with a sweet smile. "But you shouldn't be so independent, you know, you really shouldn't."
He smiled back. "I'm only independent till they come to my way of thinking."
Lady Chelmer gasped. "Then you still have hopes of Highmead!"
"I won a moral victory there each time, Lady Chelmer."
"How so, sir?" put in the Marquis. "Your opponent increased the Government majority—"