answered, in a
tone not calculated to disturb the reader,

"I hope it's not altogether too late."

"The choice is so small out here, isn't it? Now, according to Tomes, Mr.
Medland ought to marry a duchess--well, a dowager-duchess--but there
isn't one."

"I should hardly have thought the Premier quite the man for a duchess,"
said Coxon, rather superciliously.

"Well, I like him much better than most dukes I've seen. Why do you
shake your head?"

"I've the greatest respect for Mr. Medland as my leader, but--come, Miss
Derosne, he's hardly--now is he?"

"I like him very much indeed," declared Alicia. "I think he's the most
interesting man I've ever met."

"But thinking a man interesting and thinking him a man one would like to
marry are quite different, surely?" suggested fastidious Mr. Coxon.

"Thinking him interesting and thinking him a man one would be _likely_
to marry are quite different," corrected Eleanor, emerging from Tomes.

"By the way, who was Mrs. Medland?" asked Alicia.

Coxon hesitated for a moment: Eleanor raised her eyes.

"I believe her name was Benyon," he answered. "I--I know nothing about
her."

"Didn't you know her?"

"No, I was in England, and she died a year after I came back--before I
went into politics at all."

"I wonder if she was nice."

"My dear Alicia, what can it matter?" asked Eleanor.

"If you come to that, Eleanor, most of the things we talk about don't
matter," protested Alicia. "We are not Attorney-Generals, like Mr.
Coxon, whose words are worth--how much?"

"Now, Miss Derosne, you're chaffing me."

"Come and feed the swans," said Alicia, rising.

"What will Mary think?" said Eleanor, settling herself down again to
Tomes. "And why is Alicia so curious about the Medlands?"

It was perhaps natural that Eleanor should be puzzled to answer the
question she put to herself, but in reality the interest Alicia felt
admitted of easy explanation. She had first encountered Medland under
conditions which invested him with all the attraction that a visibly
dominant character exercises over a young mind, and the impression then
created had been of late much deepened by what she heard from her
brother. Dick felt that the Governor would be a cold, and Lady Eynesford
a thoroughly unfavourable, auditor of his views on the Medlands, but, in
spite of Daisy's cruel indifference, he had taken advantage of her
permission to pay her more than one visit, and he poured out his soul to