nothing about politics, and merely copied Youghal's waistcoats,
and, less successfully, his conversation, Francesca felt herself
justified in deploring the intimacy. To a woman who dressed well
on comparatively nothing a year it was an anxious experience to
have a son who dressed sumptuously on absolutely nothing.

The cloud that had passed over her face when she caught sight of
the offending Youghal was presently succeeded by a smile of
gratified achievement, as she encountered a bow of recognition and
welcome from a portly middle-aged gentleman, who seemed genuinely
anxious to include her in the rather meagre group that he had
gathered about him.

"We were just talking about my new charge," he observed genially,
including in the "we" his somewhat depressed-looking listeners, who
in all human probability had done none of the talking. "I was just
telling them, and you may be interested to hear this--"

Francesca, with Spartan stoicism, continued to wear an ingratiating
smile, though the character of the deaf adder that stoppeth her ear
and will not hearken, seemed to her at that moment a beautiful one.

Sir Julian Jull had been a member of a House of Commons
distinguished for its high standard of well-informed mediocrity,
and had harmonised so thoroughly with his surroundings that the
most attentive observer of Parliamentary proceedings could scarcely
have told even on which side of the House he sat. A baronetcy
bestowed on him by the Party in power had at least removed that
doubt; some weeks later he had been made Governor of some West
Indian dependency, whether as a reward for having accepted the