es were on edge and her heart bursting that made those words
seem intolerable that morning; but habit was even now too strong, and
she kept silence.

The General, to whom an answer was of no great moment, pursued his
thoughts.

"And you mark my words, Margery; the elections will go against us. The
country's in a dangerous state."

Mrs. Pendyce said:

"Oh, do you think the Liberals will really get in?"

From custom there was a shade of anxiety in her voice which she did not
feel.

"Think?" repeated General Pendyce. "I pray every night to God they
won't!"

Folding both hands on the silver knob of his Malacca cane, he stared
over them at the opposing wall; and there was something universal in
that fixed stare, a sort of blank and not quite selfish apprehension.
Behind his personal interests his ancestors had drilled into him the
impossibility of imagining that he did not stand for the welfare of his
country. Mrs. Pendyce, who had so often seen her husband look like that,
leaned out of the window above the noisy street.

The General rose.

"Well," he said, "if I can't do anything for you, Margery, I'll take
myself off; you're busy with your dressmakers. Give my love to Horace,
and tell him not to send me another telegram like that."

And bending stiffly, he pressed her hand with a touch of real courtesy
and kindness, took up his hat, and went away. Mrs. Pendyce, watching him
descend the stairs, watching his stiff sloping shoulders, his head with
its grey hair brushed carefully away from the centre parting, the backs
of his feeble, active knees, put her hand to her breast and sighed, for
with him she seemed to see descending all her past life, and that one
cannot see unmoved.

CHAPTER III

MRS. BELLEW SQUARES HER ACCOUNTS

Mrs. Bellew sat on her bed smoothing out the halves of a letter; by her
side was her jewel-case. Taking from it an amethyst necklet, an emerald
pendant, and a diamond ring, she wrapped them in cottonwool, and put
them in an envelope. The other jewels she dropped one by one into her
lap, and sat looking at them. At last, putting two necklets and two
rings back into the jewel-case, she placed the rest in a little green
box, and taking that and the envelope, went out. She called a hansom,
drove to a post-office, and sent a telegram:

PENDYCE, STOICS' CLUB.

"Be at studio six to seven.--H."

From the post-office she drove to her jeweller's, and many a man who saw
her pass with