ken any part in it."

The inquisitive glance ceased; Foster had found out the answer to what
it had asked; there were limits to the confidence which existed between
Lady May Quisante and her husband. But he only smiled comfortably;
Quisante wouldn't talk, he himself was safe, and, if anything had
cropped up in talk between him and Japhet, his skill and Japhet's vanity
had ensured that the little man should think himself the initiator,
inventor, and sole agent in the whole affair.

"We're not responsible for Japhet Williams," said he. "His vote's safe
for us now, though, and it means a few besides his own."

"I sometimes wonder," mused May, "whether anybody at an election ever
votes one way and not the other simply because he thinks that way right
and the other wrong." She laughed, adding, "You don't get the impression
that they ever do, canvassing and going about like this."

"Must allow for local feelings, Lady May."

"Yes, I know; and everybody has feelings, and I suppose every place is
local. You say a lot of people'll vote for us because Sir Winterton
wouldn't let Lady Mildmay come to the town?"

"A better stroke for us than any even Mr. Quisante has done."

"And there's something like that in every constituency, I suppose! How
do we get governed even as well as we do?"

Foster looked thoughtful and nursed his foot (in which he had a touch of
the gout). "It's all under God," he said gravely. "He turns things to
account in ways we can't foresee, Lady May." Was it possible that he was
remembering the peculiar qualities of Mr. Japhet Williams? May did not
laugh, for Mr. Foster was obviously sincere, but she looked at him with
surprise; his religion came in such odd flashes across the homely tints
of his worldly wisdom and placid acceptance of things and men as he
happened to find them. Henstead was not the Kingdom of Heaven, and he
did not pretend to think it wise to act on the assumption that it was.
Like Quisante, he did not set up for being superhuman--nor set other
people up for it either. May felt that there were lessons to be learnt
here; nay, that she was making some progress in them; though she
wondered now and then what Weston Marchmont would think of the lessons
and of her progress in them.

"The worst of it is," she went on, "that I'm afraid one has to say a lot
of things that are not exactly quite true."

"Truer than the other side," Mr. Foster affirmed emphatically, his
corpulence seeming to giv