e jewels, the hairpins, the curling-irons, the
various powders and cosmetics that were wanted for Lady Selina's
toilette, and all the time there was ringing in her ears the piteous cry
of a little Irish girl, clinging like a child to her only friend: "O
Marie! dear Marie! do get her to let me stay--I'll do everything the
doctor tells me--I'll make _haste_ and get well--I'll give no trouble.
And it's all along of the work--and the damp up in these rooms--the
doctor said so."

An hour later Lady Selina was in the stately drawing-room of Alresford
House, receiving her guests. She was out of sorts and temper, and though
Wharton arrived in due time, and she had the prospect to enliven her
during dinner--when he was of necessity parted from her by people of
higher rank--of a _tete-a-tete_ with him before the evening was over,
the dinner went heavily. The Duke on her right hand, and the Dean on her
left, were equally distasteful to her. Neither food nor wine had savour;
and once, when in an interval of talk she caught sight of her father's
face and form at the further end, growing more vacant and decrepit week
by week, she was seized with a sudden angry pang of revolt and
repulsion. Her father wearied and disgusted her. Life was often triste
and dull in the great house. Yet, when the old man should have found his
grave, she would be a much smaller person than she was now, and the days
would be so much the more tedious.

Wharton, too, showed less than his usual animation. She said to herself
at dinner that he had the face of a man in want of sleep. His young
brilliant look was somewhat tarnished, and there was worry in the
restless eye. And, indeed, she knew that things had not been going so
favourably for him in the House of late--that the stubborn opposition
of the little group of men led by Wilkins was still hindering that
concentration of the party and definition of his own foremost place in
it which had looked so close and probable a few weeks before. She
supposed he had been exhausting himself, too, over that shocking Midland
strike. The _Clarion_ had been throwing itself into the battle of the
men with a monstrous violence, for which she had several times
reproached him.

When all the guests had gone but Wharton, and Lord Alresford, duly
placed for the sake of propriety in his accustomed chair, was safely
asleep, Lady Selina asked what was the matter.

"Oh, the usual thing!" he said, as he leant against the mantelpie