ury of rain was deluging the fast-scattering crowd. A faint smile came
on Lady Casterley's lips.

"It will do them good to have their ardour damped a little. You will get
wet, Clifton--hurry! I expect Lord Valleys to dinner. Have a room got
ready for him to dress. He's motoring from Monkland."

CHAPTER III

In a very high, white-panelled room, with but little furniture, Lord
Valleys greeted his mother-in-law respectfully.

"Motored up in nine hours, Ma'am--not bad going."

"I am glad you came. When is Miltoun's election?"

"On the twenty-ninth."

"Pity! He should be away from Monkland, with that--anonymous woman
living there."

"Ah! yes; you've heard of her!"

Lady Casterley replied sharply:

"You're too easy-going, Geoffrey."

Lord Valleys smiled.

"These war scares," he said, "are getting a bore. Can't quite make out
what the feeling of the country is about them."

Lady Casterley rose:

"It has none. When war comes, the feeling will be all right. It always
is. Give me your arm. Are you hungry?"...

When Lord Valleys spoke of war, he spoke as one who, since he arrived at
years of discretion, had lived within the circle of those who direct
the destinies of States. It was for him--as for the lilies in the great
glass house--impossible to see with the eyes, or feel with the feelings
of a flower of the garden outside. Soaked in the best prejudices and
manners of his class, he lived a life no more shut off from the general
than was to be expected. Indeed, in some sort, as a man of facts and
common sense, he was fairly in touch with the opinion of the average
citizen. He was quite genuine when he said that he believed he knew what
the people wanted better than those who prated on the subject; and no
doubt he was right, for temperamentally he was nearer to them than their
own leaders, though he would not perhaps have liked to be told so. His
man-of-the-world, political shrewdness had been superimposed by life
on a nature whose prime strength was its practicality and lack of
imagination. It was his business to be efficient, but not strenuous, or
desirous of pushing ideas to their logical conclusions; to be neither
narrow nor puritanical, so long as the shell of 'good form' was
preserved intact; to be a liberal landlord up to the point of not
seriously damaging his interests; to be well-disposed towards the arts
until those arts revealed that which he had not before perceived; it was
his business to ha