low, and say that if he will stick to one branch of
politics, he may become useful. Personally, I don't call him a man of
the world."

"Not of our world, perhaps, papa. But there are so many other worlds!"

"Sara likes him. A lot of women like him," said his lordship. He was
annoyed at her interruption and took his revenge by a feminine thrust.
"The hero," said he, "married some mysterious person this very morning.
We may not hear so much about him in the future!"

"Dear Lord Garrow," said Pensee, "his wife is a friend of mine--she is
the most charming person."

Sara put out her hand and touched Reckage on the arm.

"Do you think," she asked, "that the wife will be an obstacle in his
way?"

"Who can tell? Of course she has means, and he likes to do everything
well."

"Speaking for myself," said Harding, "I have always held that a man's
career rests rather on his genius than his marriage."

"But you, my dear fellow," put in Lord Garrow, testily, "you retired
from political life because your theories could find no illustration
there."

"Pardon me," said Sir Piers, with a grim laugh. "I retired because I had
a faultless wife but unfortunately no genius. I shall therefore watch
your friend's triumph or failure--for his position would seem to be
precisely the reverse of my own--with peculiar sympathy."

"Ah! I fear you are rather heartless," exclaimed Sara. "For a man to
have gone so far as Orange, and to know that perhaps--I say, perhaps--he
can hope no higher because he made a fool of himself about a woman!"

"You speak as though it were a romantic marriage--a question of love."

"Of course," said the young lady softly. "It is a great passion."

"Well, after all," observed Harding, who was not insensible himself to
Sara's delightfulness, "the British public is absurdly fond of a
love-match. They adore a sentimental Prime Minister. They want to see
him either marrying for love, or jilted in his youth for a richer man.
These things enlist the popular sympathy. What made Henry Fox? His
elopement with Lady Caroline Lennox."

"To be sure," said Reckage--"to be sure. That's a point."

"It is a compliment to the sex," continued Harding, "when a great man is
taken captive by a pretty face. Men, too, rally round a Lochinvar. Such
an evidence of heart--or folly, if you prefer to call it so--is also
an evidence of disinterestedness. So, on the whole, I cannot follow your
objections to the new Mrs. Orange."

"You h