Lord
Broadstone should die or retire--this indeed had been Ferrier's working
understanding with his party for years; years of strenuous labor, and on
the whole of magnificent generalship. Deposition from the leadership of
the Commons, with whatever compensations, could only mean to him, and to
the world in general, the failure of his career.

"They would give him Foreign Affairs, of course," said Marsham, after a
pause.

"Nothing that they could give him would make up!" said Lady Lucy, with
energy. "You certainly, Oliver, could not lend yourself to any intrigue
of the kind."

Marsham shrugged his shoulders.

"My position is not exactly agreeable! I don't agree with Ferrier, and I
do agree with the malcontents. Moreover, when we come in, they will
represent the strongest element in the party, with the future in
their hands."

Lady Lucy looked at him with sparkling eyes.

"You can't desert him, Oliver!--not you!"

"Perhaps I'd better drop out of Parliament!" he said, impatiently. "The
game sometimes doesn't seem worth the candle."

Lady Lucy--alarmed--laid a hand on his.

"Don't say those things, Oliver. You know you have never done so well as
this year."

"Yes--up to two months ago."

His mother withdrew her hand. She perfectly understood. Oliver often
allowed himself allusions of this kind, and the relations of mother and
son were not thereby improved.

Silence reigned for a few minutes. With a hand that shook slightly, Lady
Lucy drew toward her a small piece of knitting she had been occupied
with when Marsham came in, and resumed it. Meanwhile there flashed
through his mind one of those recollections that are only apparently
incongruous. He was thinking of a dinner-party which his mother had
given the night before; a vast dinner of twenty people; all well-fed,
prosperous, moderately distinguished, and, in his opinion, less than
moderately amused. The dinner had dragged; the guests had left early;
and he had come back to the drawing-room after seeing off the last of
them, stifled with yawns. Waste of food, waste of money, waste of
time--waste of everything! He had suddenly been seized with a passionate
sense of the dulness of his home life; with a wonder how long he could
go on submitting to it. And as he recalled these feelings--as of dust
in the mouth--there struck across them an image from a dream-world.
Diana sat at the head of the long table; Diana in white, with her
slender neck, and the blue eyes