be as a unit, detached from his
disgraceful relatives. Peter understood that. As he hadn't much expected
to be cultivated again at all, he was in good spirits as he walked with
Denis to Norfolk Street. No word passed between them as to Peter's past
disgrace or present employment; Denis had an easy way of sliding lightly
over embarrassing subjects.

They parted, and Denis dined in Norfolk Street with a parliamentary
secretary, and Peter supped in Brook Street with the other boarders.

CHAPTER XII

THE LOSS OF A GOBLET AND OTHER THINGS

Denis and Lucy were married at the end of September. They went motoring
in Italy for a month, and by the beginning of November were settled at
Astleys. Astleys was in Berkshire, and was Urquhart's home. It was rather
beautiful, as homes go, with a careless, prosperous grace about it at
which Lucy laughed because it was so Urquhartesque.

Almost at once they asked some people to stay there to help with the
elections and the pheasant shooting. The elections were hoped for in
December. Urquhart did not propose to bother much about them; he was a
good deal more interested in the pheasants; but he had, of course, every
intention of doing the usual and suitable things, and carrying the
business through well. Lucy only laughed; to want to get into Parliament
was so funny, looked at from the point of view she had always been used
to. Denis, being used by inheritance and upbringing to another point of
view, did not see that it was so funny; to him it was a very natural
profession for a man to go into; his family had always provided a supply
of members for both houses. Lucy and Peter, socially more obscure,
laughed childishly together over it. "Fancy being a Liberal or a
Conservative out of all the things there are in the world to be!" as
Peter had once commented.

But it was delightfully Urquhart-like, this lordly assumption of a share
in the government of a country. No doubt it was worth having, because all
the things Urquhart wanted and obtained were that; he had an eye for good
things, like Peter, only he gained possession of them, and Peter could
only admire from afar.

They were talking about the election prospects at dinner on the evening
of the fifteenth of November. They were a young and merry party. At one
end of the table was Denis, looking rather pale after a hard day's
hunting, and very much amused with life; at the other Lucy, in a white
frock, small and open-eyed like