Good-bye."

"Why do you go away, Arthur? Stop and protect me," said Mildred,
laughing.

"Oh, no, indeed, I don't want to spoil sport. I would not interfere
with your amusement on any account."

Mildred looked a little vexed.

"Well, you will come back to dinner?"

"That depends upon what happens."

"I told you what would happen, Arthur. Good-bye."

"Perhaps it is as well to get it over at once," thought Mildred.

In the hall Arthur met Lord Minster, and they passed with a gesture of
recognition so infinitesimally small that it almost faded into the
nothingness of a "cut." So far as he could condescend to notice so low
a thing at all, his lordship had conceived a great dislike for Arthur.

"How do you do, Lord Minster?" said Mildred, cordially. "I hear that
you went to the Convent yesterday; what did you think of the view?"

"The view, Mrs. Carr--was there a view? I did not notice it; indeed, I
only went up there at all to please Florence. I don't like that sort
of thing."

"If you don't like roughing it, I am afraid that you did not enjoy
your voyage out."

"Well, no, I don't think I did, and there was a low fellow on board
who had been ruined by the retrocession of the Transvaal, and who,
hearing that I was in the Government, took every possible opportunity
to tell me publicly that his wife and children were almost in a state
of starvation, as though I cared about his confounded wife and
children. He was positively brutal. No, certainly I did not enjoy it.
However, I am rewarded by finding you here."

"I am very much flattered."

Lord Minster fixed his eye-glass firmly in his eye, planted his hands
at the bottom of his trousers pockets, and, clearing his throat,
placed himself in the attitude that was so familiar to the House, and
began.

"Mrs. Carr, I told you, when last I had the pleasure of seeing you,
that I should take the first opportunity of renewing a conversation
that I was forced to suspend in order to attend, if my memory serves
me, a very important committee meeting. I was therefore surprised,
indeed I may almost say hurt, when I found that you had suddenly
flitted from London."

"Indeed, Lord Minster?"

"I will not, however, take up the time of this--I mean your time, by
recapitulating all that I told you on that occasion; the facts are, so
to speak, all upon the table, and I will merely touch upon the main
heads of my case. My prospects are these: I am now a member of the
Cabinet,