and there a captive
man) across the two gardens. Or somehow they commandeered the Square
Garden on the pretext of a vast Garden Party, at which every one
talked and laughed at once over their Suffrage views.

Yes: Honoria was happy then, as indeed she had been during most of
her life, except when her brother died and her mother died. What did
she lack for happiness? Nothing that this world can give in the
opening twentieth century ... not even a very good pianola or a
motor. I feel somehow it was almost unfair (in my rage at the
inequality of treatment meted out by the Powers Beyond). Shall not
General Sir Petworth Armstrong die in the great debacle of the
world-wide War? I shall see, later. And yet I feel that this nucleus
of pure happiness housed in Kensington Square--or at Petworth
Manor--was to the little world that revolved round the Armstrongs
like a good radiator in a cold house. It warmed many a chilly nature
into fructification; it healed many a scar, it brightened many a
humble life, like that of Bertie Adams's hard-working, washerwoman
mother, or the game-keeper's crippled child at Petworth or the
newest, suburbanest little employe of _Fraser and Claridge's_ huge
establishment in the Brompton Road. It pulled straight the wayward
life of some young subaltern, about to come a cropper, but who after
a talk or two with that jolly Mrs. Armstrong took quite a different
course and made a decent marriage. It conjoined with many of the
social activities for good of one who might have been her twin
sister--Suzanne Feenix--only that Suzanne was twenty years older and
perhaps an inch or two shorter. Dear woman! My remembrance flashes a
kiss to your astral cheek--which in reality I should never have
dared to salute, so great was my awe of Colonel Armstrong's
muscles--as, at any reasonable time before or after the birth of
your last child in June, 1910, you stand in the hall of your sunny,
eighteenth century house, with the gold and green glint of the
Kensington garden behind you: saying with your glad eyes and bonny
mouth "Come to our Suffrage Party? _Such_ a lark! We've got Mrs.
Pankhurst here and the Police daren't raid us; they're so afraid of
'Army.' Of course he's away, but he knows _perfectly well_ what I'm
doing. He's _quite_ given in. Now Michael, you show Sir Harry and
Lady Johnston to the front seats..."

(I looked round for the rather gloomy presence of Michael Rossiter,
but it was his little golden-haired