ely. "I have
been working out a number of new proposals--and I submit them to Mr.
Melrose to-night."

She looked wistfully at the speaker.

"Good luck! But Mr. Melrose is hard to move."

Faversham assented.

"The hope lies in his being now an old man--and anxious to get rid of
responsibilities. I shall try to show him that bad citizenship costs more
money than good."

"I hope--oh! I _hope_--you'll succeed!" she said fervently. Her emotion
infected him. He smiled down upon her.

"That ought to make me succeed! But of course I have no experience. I am
a townsman."

"You've always been a Londoner?"

"Practically, always. But I was tired of London before all this
happened--dying to get out of it."

And he began a short account of himself, more intimate than any he had
yet given her; to which Lydia listened with her open, friendly look,
perhaps a little shyer than before. And so different, instinctively, is
the way in which a man will tell his story to a woman, from that in which
he tells it to a man, that the same half-ironic, half-bitter narrative
which had repelled Tatham, attracted Lydia. Her sympathy rose at once to
meet it. He was an orphan, and till now lonely and unsuccessful;
tormented, too, by unsatisfied ideals and ambitions. Her imagination was
pitiful and quick; she imagined she understood. She liked his frankness;
it flattered and touched her. She liked his deep rich voice, and his dark
face, with its lean strength, and almost southern colour. During his
illness he had grown a small peaked beard, and it pleased her artistic
sense, by giving him a look of Cardinal Richelieu--as that great man
stood figured in an old French print she had picked up once in a box on
the Paris quays. Moreover his friendship offered her so much fresh
knowledge of the world and life. Here, again, was comradeship. She was
lucky indeed. Harry Tatham--and now this clever, interesting man,
entering on his task. It was a great responsibility. She would not fail
either of her new friends! They knew--she had made--she would make it
quite plain, that she was not setting her cap at either. Wider insights,
fresh powers, honourable, legitimate powers, for her sex--it was these
she was after.

In all all this Lydia was perfectly sincere. But the Comic Spirit sitting
aloft took note.

They paused a moment on the edge of the plateau on which the house
stood--the ground breaking from it to the west. A group of cottages
appeared amid