red after eleven o'clock to uphold the State and arrange
a few bets with sporting clients. He admitted, as the supreme
importance of the night leaped out at him from the printed page, that,
if only for form's sake, he ought to have been at the Liberal Club that
evening. He had been requested to go, but had refused, because on
Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays, he always spent the evening in study
or in the semblance of study. He would not break that rule even in
honour of the culmination of the dazzling career of his political idol.
Perhaps another proof of the justice of Maggie's assertion that he was a
regular old maid!

He knew what his father would say. His father would be furious. His
father in his uncontrolled fury would destroy Gladstone. And such was
his father's empire over him that he was almost ready on Gladstone's
behalf to adopt an apologetic and slightly shamed attitude to his father
concerning this madness of Home Rule--to admit by his self-conscious
blushes that it was madness. He well knew that at breakfast the next
morning, in spite of any effort to the contrary, he would have a guilty
air when his father began to storm. The conception of a separate
parliament in Dublin, and of separate taxation, could not stand before
his father's anger...

Beneath his window, in the garden, he suddenly heard a faint sound as of
somebody in distress.

"What the deuce--!" he exclaimed. "If that isn't the old man I'm--"
Startled, he looked at his watch. It was after midnight.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

FOUR.

As he opened the garden door, he saw, in the porch where had passed his
first secret interview with Hilda, the figure of his father as it were
awkwardly rising from the step. The gas had not been turned out in the
hall, and it gave a feeble but sufficient illumination to the porch and
the nearest parts of the garden. Darius stood silent and apparently
irresolute, with a mournful and even despairing face. He wore his best
black suit, and a new silk hat and new black gloves, and in one hand he
carried a copy of "The Signal" that was very crumpled. He ignored
Edwin.

"Hello, father!" said Edwin persuasively. "Anything wrong?"

The heavy figure moved itself into the house without a word, and Edwin
shut and bolted the door.

"Funeral go off all right?" Edwin inquired with as much nonchalance as
he could. (The thought crossed his mind: "I suppos