er career, or would you fight it out?"

"I would fight it out," Minola said, looking up to him with sparkling
eyes, "and I would never let it drop. I would make them do me justice."

"Just what I think; just what I came to England resolved to do. I hate
the idea of giving in; but people here discourage me. Money discourages
me. He says the Government will never do anything unless I make myself
troublesome."

"Well, then, why not make yourself troublesome?"

"I have made myself troublesome in one sense," he said, with a vexed
kind of laugh, "by haunting ante-chambers, and trying to force people
to see me who don't want to see me. But I can't do any more of that
kind of work; I am sick of it. I am ashamed of having tried it at all."

"Yes, I couldn't do that," Minola said gravely.

"Then," Heron said, with a little embarrassment, "a man--a very kind
and well-meaning fellow, an old friend of my father's--offered to
introduce me to Lady Chertsey--a very clever woman, a queen of society,
I am told, who gets all the world (of politics, I mean) into her
drawing-room, and delights in being a sort of power, and all that. She
could push a fellow, they say, wonderfully if she took any interest in
him. But I couldn't do that, you know."

"No? Why not?"

"Well, I shouldn't care to be introduced to a lady's drawing-room with
the secret purpose of trying to get her to do me a service. There seems
something mean in that. Besides, I have a cause (at least, I think I
have) which is too good to be served in that kind of way. If I can't
get a hearing and justice from the Government of England and the people
of England for the sake of right and for the claims I have, I will
never try to get it through. Oh, well, perhaps, I ought not to say what
I was going to say."

"Why not?" Minola asked again.

"I mean, perhaps I ought not to say it to you."

"I don't know really. Tell me what it is, and then I'll tell you
whether you ought to say it."

He laughed. "Well, I was only going to say that I don't care to have my
cause served by petticoat influence."

"I think you are quite right. If I were a man, I should think petticoat
influence in such a matter contemptible. But why should you not like to
say so?"

"Only because I was afraid you might think I meant to speak
contemptuously of the influence and the advice of women. I don't mean
anything of the kind. I have the highest opinion of the advice of women
and their influence, as I