ve come back. Would it be any use
asking you to stop here?'

'Later, every use. Just at this moment I mustn't. Till I see how things
are going to turn out I must live down there in London. But my heart is
here with you in this green old garden, and where my heart is I hope to
bring my battered old body very often. I will stop to luncheon with you
if you will let me.'

'Let you? My dear, I wish you were always stopping here.' And the grey
old lady put her arms round the neck of the Dictator and kissed him
again.

CHAPTER IV

THE LANGLEYS

That same day there was a luncheon party at the new town house of the
Langleys, Prince's Gate. The Langleys were two in number all told,
father and daughter.

Sir Rupert Langley was a remarkable man, but his daughter, Helena
Langley, was a much more remarkable woman. The few handfuls of people
who considered themselves to constitute the world in London had at one
time talked much about Sir Rupert, but now they talked a great deal more
about his daughter. Sir Rupert was once grimly amused, at a great party
in a great house, to hear himself pointed out by a knowing youth as
Helena Langley's father.

There was a time when people thought, and Sir Rupert thought with them,
that Rupert Langley was to do great deeds in the world. He had entered
political life at an early age, as all the Langleys had done since the
days of Anne, and he made more than a figure there. He had travelled in
Central Asia in days when travel there or anywhere else was not so easy
as it is now, and he had published a book of his travels before he was
three-and-twenty, a book which was highly praised, and eagerly read. He
was saluted as a sort of coming authority upon Eastern affairs in a day
when the importance of Eastern affairs was beginning to dawn dimly upon
the insular mind, and he made several stirring speeches in the House of
Commons' which confirmed his reputation as a coming man. He was very
dogmatic, very determined in his opinions, very confident of his own
superior knowledge, and possessed of a degree of knowledge which
justified his confidence and annoyed his antagonists. He formed a little
party of his own, a party of strenuous young Tories who recognised the
fact that the world was out of joint, but who rejoiced in the conviction
that they were born for the express purpose of setting it right. In Sir
Rupert they found a leader after their own heart, and they rallied
around him and jibed