to you quickly. You knew, didn't you, that I
was married in America? Well, my wife has divorced me there. We
married in a State where such things are possible."

"Divorced you?" she exclaimed.

"Quite legally," he went on. "I saw a lawyer before I started yesterday
morning. But listen to the rest of it. Stella is married--married to
the man I thought I had thrown over the cliff. She is married to
Anthony Palliser."

"Then you are free?" Jane murmured, drawing a little away. "Not in the
least," he replied. "I am engaged to marry you."

At luncheon, with Parkins in attendance, it became possible for them to
converse coherently.

"When I found you at home in the middle of the morning," he said, "I was
afraid that you were Ill."

"I haven't been well," she admitted. "I rode some distance yesterday
and it fatigued me. Somehow or other, I think I have had the feeling,
the last few weeks, that my work here is over. All my farms are sold.
I have really now no means of occupying my time."

"It is fortunate," he told her, with a smile, "that I am able to point
out to you a new sphere of usefulness."

She made a little grimace at him behind Parkins' august back.

"Tell me," she asked, "how did you ever make your peace with the trades
unions after that terrible article of yours?"

"Because," he replied, "except for Miller, their late chief, there are a
great many highly intelligent men connected with the administration of
the trades unions. They realised the spirit in which I wrote that
article and the condition of the country at the time I wrote it. My
apologia was accepted by every one who counted. The publication of that
article," he went on, "was Miller's scheme to drive me out of politics.
It has turned out to be the greatest godsend ever vouchsafed to our
cause, for it is going to put Mr. Miller out of the power of doing
mischief for a--many years to come."

"How I hated him when he called here that day! Jane murmured
reminiscently."

"Miller is the type of man," Tallente declared, "who was always putting
the Labour Party in a false position. He was born and he has lived and
he has thought parochially. He is all the time lashing himself into a
fury over imagined wrongs and wanting to play the little tin god on
Olympus with his threatened strikes. Now there will be no more
strikes."

"I was reading about that," she reflected. "How wonderful it sounds!"

"The greatest power in the country," Tallente explained,