wonderful--whom she could never conveniently forget. Other people's mothers
were, so to speak, furniture mothers. They became the chimney-corner, or
the sofa; they looked well in combination, gave no trouble, and could be
used for all the common purposes of life. But Lady Coryston could never be
used. On the contrary, her husband--while he lived--her three sons, and her
daughter, had always appeared to her in the light of so many instruments of
her own ends. Those ends were not the ends of other women. But did it very
much matter? Marcia would sometimes ask herself. They seemed to cause just
as much friction and strife and bad blood as other people's ends.

As the girl sat silent, looking down on the bald heads of a couple of
Ministers on the Front Bench, she was uneasily conscious of her mother as
of some charged force ready to strike. And, indeed, given the circumstances
of the family, on that particular afternoon, nothing could be more certain
than blows of some kind before long....

"You see Mr. Lester?" said her mother, abruptly. "I thought Arthur would
get him in."

Marcia's dreaminess departed. Her eyes ran keenly along the benches of the
Strangers' Gallery opposite till they discovered the dark head of a man who
was leaning forward on his elbows, closely attentive, apparently, to the
debate.

"Has he just come in?"

"A minute or two ago. It means, I suppose, that Arthur told him he expected
to be up about seven. When will this idiot have done!" said Lady Coryston,
impatiently.