spects an
unnatural silence. Tallente trifled with his _hors d'oeuvres_ and was
inquisitive about the sauce with which his fish was flavoured. Stella
sent away her plate untouched, but drank two glasses of champagne. The
light came back to her eyes, she found courage again. After all, she
was independent of this man, independent even of his name. She looked
across the table at him appraisingly. He was still sufficiently
good-looking, lithe of frame and muscular, with features well-cut
although a little irregular in outline. Time, however, and anxious work
were beginning to leave their marks. His hair was grey at the sides,
there were deep lines in his face, he seemed to her fancy to have
shrunken a little during the last few years. He had still the languid,
high-bred voice which she had always admired so munch, the same coolness
of manner and quiet dignity. He was a personable man, but after all he
was a failure. His career, so far as she could judge it, was at an end.
She was a fool to imagine, even for a moment, that her whole future lay
in his keeping.

"Have you any plans?" she asked him presently. "Another constituency?"

He smiled a little wearily. For once he spoke quite naturally.

"The only plan I have formulated at present is to rest for a time," he
admitted.

She drank another glass of champagne and felt almost confident. She
told him the small events of the sparsely populated neighbourhood, spoke
of the lack of water in the trout stream, the improvement in the golf
links, the pheasants which a near-by landowner was turning down. They
were comparative newcomers and had seen as yet little of their
neighbours.

"I was told," she concluded, "that the great lady of the neighbourhood
was to have called upon me this afternoon. I waited in but she didn't
come."

"And who is that?" he enquired.

"Lady Jane Partington of Woolhanger--a daughter of the Duke of
Barminster. Woolhanger was left to her by an old aunt, and they say
that she never leaves the place."

"An elderly lady?" he asked, merely with an intent of prolonging a
harmless subject of conversation.

"On the contrary, quite young," his wife replied. "She seems to be a
sort of bachelor-spinster, who lives out in that lonely place without a
chaperon and rules the neighborhood. You ought to make friends with
her, Andrew. They say that she is half a Socialist.--By the by, how
long are we going to stay down here?"

"We will discuss that presently," h