"How do you get on with her ladyship?" asked the old man, gaily, lowering
his voice.

The young man smiled discreetly.

"Oh, very well. I don't see very much of her."

"I suppose she's pressed you into the service--makes you help Arthur?"

"I looked out a few things for his speech to-day. But he has his own
secretary."

"You're not staying for the rest of the debate?"

"No, I'm going back to St. James's Square. I have a heap of arrears to get
through."

"Do they put you up there? I know it's a huge house."

"Yes. I have a bedroom and sitting-room there when I want them, and my own
arrangements."

"Ta-ta."

Sir Wilfrid nodded pleasantly, and vanished into a side passage leading to
the Ladies' Gallery. The young man, Reginald Lester, to whom he had been
chatting, was in some sort a protege of his own. It was Sir Wilfrid,
indeed, who had introduced him, immediately after he had won an Oxford
historical fellowship, to Lady Coryston, as librarian, for the highly paid
work of cataloguing a superb collection of MSS. belonging to the Corystons.