"Yes?"
"He seems abstracted, moody—I think, in fact I'm sure that the boy is in love."
"Yes?"
Lady Cicely has turned slightly pale. The weariness is out of her manner.
"Trust the instinct of an old man, my dear. There's a woman in it. We old parliamentary hands are very shrewd, you know, even in these things. Some one is playing the devil with Jack—with Harding."
Sir John is now putting on his gloves again and gathering up his parliamentary papers from the parliamentary paper stand on the left.
He cannot see the change in Lady Cicely's face. He is not meant to see it. But even the little girls in the tenth row of the gallery are wise.
He goes on. "Talk to Harding. Get it out of him. You women can do these things. Find out what the trouble is and let me know. I must help him." (A pause. Sir John is speaking almost to himself—and the gallery.) "I promised his mother when she sent him home, sent him to England, that I would."
Lady Cicely speaks. "You knew Mr. Harding's mother very well?"
Sir John: "Very well."