be allowed to kill themselves—or thousands lose their liberty?"
His blue eyes scanned her beautiful impetuous face with a certain cool hardness. Internally he was more and more in revolt against a "monstrous regiment of women" and the influence upon the most complex economic problems of such a personality as that before him.
But his word "liberty" pricked her. The look of feeling passed away. Her eyes kindled as sharply and drily as his own.
"Freedom?—let me quote you Cromwell! 'Every sectary saith, "O give me liberty!" But give it him, and to the best of his power he will yield it to no one else.' So with your careless or brutal employer—give him liberty, and no one else shall get it."
"Only by metaphor—not legally," said George, stubbornly. "So long as men are not slaves by law there is always a chance for freedom. Any way we stand for freedom—as an end, not a means. It is not the business of the State to make people happy—not at all!—at least that is our view—but it is the business of the State to keep them free."
"Ah!" said Bennett, with a long breath, "there you've hit the nail—the whole difference between you and us."
George nodded. Lady Maxwell did not speak immediately. But George was conscious that he was being observed, closely considered. Their glances crossed an instant, in antagonism, certainly, if not in dislike.
"How long is it since you came home from India?" she asked him suddenly.
"About six months."
"And you were, I think, a long time abroad?"
"Nearly four years. Does that make you think I have not had much time to get up the things I am going to vote about?" said the young man, laughing. "I don't know! On the broadest issues of politics, one makes up one's mind as well in Asia as in Europe—better perhaps."
"On the Empire, I suppose—and England's place in the world? That's a side which—I know—I remember much too little. You think our life depends on a governing class—and that we and democracy are weakening that class too much?"
"That's about it. And for democracy it is all right. But you—you are the traitors!"
His thrust, however, did not rouse her to any corresponding rhetoric. She smiled merely, and began to question him about his travels. She did it with great deftness, so that after an answer or two both his temper and manner insensibly softened, and he found himself talking with ease and success. His mixed personality revealed itself—his capacity for certain veiled enthusiasms, his respect for power, for knowledge, his pessimist beliefs as to the average lot of men.
Bennett, who listened easily, was glad to help her make her guest talk. Frank Leven left the group near the sofa and came to listen, too. Tressady was more and more spurred, carried out of himself. Lady Maxwell's fine eyes and stately ways were humanised after all by a quick responsiveness, which for most people, however critical, made conversation with her draw like a magnet. Her intelligence, too, was competent, left the mere feminine behind in these connections that Tressady offered her, no less than in others. She had not lived in the world of high politics for nearly five years for nothing; so that unconsciously, and indeed quite against his will, Tressady found himself talking to her, after a while, as though she had been a man and an equal, while at the same time taking more pains than he would ever have taken for a man.
"Well, you have seen a lot!" said Frank Leven at last, with a rather envious sigh.
Bennett's modest face suddenly reddened.
"If only Sir George will use his eyes to as good purpose at home—" he said involuntarily, then stopped. Few men were more unready and awkward in conversation; yet when roused he was one of the best platform speakers of his day.
George laughed.
"One sees best what appeals to one, I am afraid," he said, only to be instantly conscious that he had made a rather stupid admission in face of the enemy.
Lady Maxwell's lip twitched; he saw the flash of some quick thought cross her face. But she said nothing.
Only when he got up to go, she bade him notice that she was always at home on Sundays, and would be glad that he should remember it. He made a rather cold and perfunctory reply. Inwardly he said to himself, "Why does she say nothing of Letty, whom she knows—and of our marriage—if she wants to make friends?"
Nevertheless, he left the house with the feeling of one who has passed an hour not of the common sort. He had done himself justice, made his mark. And as for her—in spite of his flashes of dislike he carried away a strong impression of something passionate and vivid that clung to the memory. Or was it merely eyes and pose, that astonishingly beautiful colour, and touch of classic dignity which she got—so the world said—from some remote strain of Italian blood? Most probably! All the same, she had fewer of the ordinary womanly arts than he had imagined. How easy it would have been to send that message to Letty she had not sent! He thought simply that for a clever woman she might have been more adroit.
* * * * *
The door had no sooner closed behind Tressady than Betty Leven, with a quick look after him, bent across to her hostess, and said in a stage whisper:
"Who? Post me up, please."
"One of Fontenoy's gang," said her husband, before Lady Maxwell could answer. "A new member, and as sharp as needles. He's been exactly to all the places where I want to go, Betty, and you won't let me."
He glanced at his wife with a certain sharpness. For Tressady had spoken in passing of nilghai-shooting in the Himalayas, and the remark had brought the flush of an habitual discontent to the young man's cheek.
Betty merely held out a white child's wrist.
"Button my glove, please, and don't talk. I have got ever so many questions to ask Marcella."
Leven applied himself rather sulkily to his task while Betty pursued her inquiries.
"Isn't he going to marry Letty Sewell?"
"Yes," said Lady Maxwell, opening her eyes rather wide. "Do you know her?"
"Why, my dear, she's Mr. Watton's cousin—isn't she?" said Betty, turning towards that young man. "I saw her once at your mother's."
"Certainly she is my cousin," said that young man, smiling, "and she is going to marry Tressady at Easter. So much I can vouch for, though I don't know her so well, perhaps, as the rest of my family do."
"Oh!" said Betty, drily, releasing her husband and crossing her small hands across her knee. "That means—Miss Sewell isn't one of Mr. Watton's favourite cousins. You don't mind talking about your cousins, do you? You may blacken the character of all mine. Is she nice?"
"Who—Letty? Why, of course she is nice," said Edward Watton, laughing.
"All young ladies are."
"Oh goodness!" said Betty, shaking her halo of gold hair. "Commend me to cousins for letting one down easy."
"Too bad, Lady Leven!" said Watton, getting up to escape. "Why not ask Bayle? He knows all things. Let me hand you over to him. He will sing you all my cousin's charms."
"Delighted!" said Bayle as he, too, rose—"only unfortunately I ought at this moment to be at Wimbledon."
He had the air of a typical official, well dressed, suave, and infinitely self-possessed, as he held out his hand—deprecatingly—to Lady Leven.
"Oh! you private secretaries!" said Betty, pouting and turning away from him.
"Don't abolish us," he said, pleading. "We must live."
"Je n'en vois pas la nécessité!" said Betty, over her shoulder.
"Betty, what a babe you are!" cried her husband, as Bayle, Watton, and Bennett all disappeared together.
"Not at all!" cried Betty. "I wanted to get some truth out of somebody.
For, of course, the real truth is that this Miss Sewell is—"