"Or both," said Lady Chaloner, earnestly and anxiously, as though
contemplating all sources of revenue. "Signed photographs."

"Excellent," said Wentworth.

"There ought to be people enough to buy, if they would only come," said
Lady Chaloner, taking up a Visitors' List that lay beside her. "People
like the Francis Rendels, for instance," putting her finger on the name,
"or----"

"The Rendels? Are they here?" said Wentworth, with much interest.

"So it says here. What is she like?" said Lady Chaloner. "Would she
help?"

"I am not sure," said Wentworth. "She's in mourning, and very quiet--but
very charming."

"Thank you," said the Princess with a gay laugh. "I am sure that is a
compliment _a mon adresse_. I know what you mean when you say that very
quiet women are charming. Let us go away, Moricourt; we are too noisy
for Mr. Wentworth."

"You are too bad, Maddy, really," said Lady Chaloner, smiling at this
brilliant sally.

"_Ich bitte sehr_," said Wentworth to the Princess, with a little bow,
as he took up the paper and looked for the address of the Rendels.
"Pavillon du Jardin, Hotel de Londres--I must go and look them up," he
said.

"You might beat them up to come and buy, at any rate," said Lady
Chaloner, "if they can't do anything else."

"I will do what I can," said Wentworth with a smile, reflecting as he
walked off what a strange blurring of the focus of life there is when,
everything being concentrated on to one particular purpose, whether it
be a bazaar, an election, or the giving of a ball, all the human beings
one encounters are considered from the point of view of their fitness to
one particular end--in the aspect of a buyer or seller, as a voter, as a
partner, as the case may be. There was no doubt that at this moment the
whole of mankind were expected to fit somehow into Lady Chaloner's
pattern: to be useful for the bazaar, or to be thrown away as useless.

As Wentworth turned away he exchanged greetings with a jovial
important-looking personage coming in the other direction, no other than
Mr. Pateley, exhaling prosperity as he came. The completion of the Cape
to Cairo railway, and the reinstatement in public opinion of the
'Equator' Mine, proved to be of gold after all--let alone certain
fortunate pecuniary transactions connected with that reinstatement--had
given Pateley both political and material satisfaction. The _Arbiter_
was advancing more triumphantly than ever, and its editor was a