more pleased than she
cared to admit, at the suitability of the match. He had always been
an excellent, even a sympathetic son; and it had been part of his
excellence that whenever he should marry, she had been quite certain
that he would marry like this, selecting with dignity a young woman
whom one could emphatically approve--a testimony to his constancy in
certain definite traditions in which he had been reared, traditions,
it may be said, which he adhered to with a tenacity that even
exceeded her own.

It had never entered into her calculations, however, to look upon
him as an ardent lover, and yet it was as an ardent lover that he
had just spoken. She recognised the tone.

And, strangely enough, for the moment it happened to touch her, to
give her an increased interest in the affair, though afterwards she
could reflect that in a man of Charles' character, so soberly
practical and mature, it was perhaps a trifle incongruous, and, at
the best, not precisely the tone by which women are most likely to
be won.

She said placidly:

"I hope you will succeed. If you take my advice, you will speak at
once."

"I had meant to take the first occasion," he said.

"Ah, my dear," she put in, "you had better make one yourself."

Charles simply smiled. Her approbation of his views, and the
unwonted dissipation of a prolonged and indolent breakfast, together
with the pleasant excitement of shortly taking the political field,
had rendered him singularly mild.

He remembered that he was invited that night to a dance of some
magnitude, at a house big enough for privacy to be easily secured,
and where Mary would certainly be.

"Perhaps I will," he said, gathering up his voluminous papers as he
prepared for departure, "this evening."

He was still in the same mood of cheerful resolution when, after an
exceptionally busy day, which had also ministered in an exceptional
degree to his self-esteem (it had included an interview with one of
the whips of his party, as well as a satisfactory conversation with
his agent on the temper of the constituency whose member was so
seasonably deceased), he had dressed at his club, and dawdled at his
accustomed table in the large bright room over a solitary dinner.

His head had been very full of his political ambitions, into which
the image of Miss Masters had not inconveniently intruded. He had
eminently that orderly faculty of detachment which allows a man to
separate and disconnect the