“Hullo,” said Arthur, “here comes Lord Minster in his war paint, frock coat, tall hat, eye-glass and all.  Good-bye.”

“Why do you go away, Arthur?  Stop and protect me,” said Mildred, laughing.

“Oh, no, indeed, I don’t want to spoil sport.  I would not interfere with your amusement on any account.”

Mildred looked a little vexed.

“Well, you will come back to dinner?”

“That depends upon what happens.”

“I told you what would happen, Arthur.  Good-bye.”

“Perhaps it is as well to get it over at once,” thought Mildred.

In the hall Arthur met Lord Minster, and they passed with a gesture of recognition so infinitesimally small that it almost faded into the nothingness of a “cut.”  So far as he could condescend to notice so low a thing at all, his lordship had conceived a great dislike for Arthur.

“How do you do, Lord Minster?” said Mildred, cordially.  “I hear that you went to the Convent yesterday; what did you think of the view?”

“The view, Mrs. Carr—­was there a view?  I did not notice it; indeed, I only went up there at all to please Florence.  I don’t like that sort of thing.”

“If you don’t like roughing it, I am afraid that you did not enjoy your voyage out.”

“Well, no, I don’t think I did, and there was a low fellow on board who had been ruined by the retrocession of the Transvaal, and who, hearing that I was in the Government, took every possible opportunity to tell me publicly that his wife and children were almost in a state of starvation, as though I cared about his confounded wife and children.  He was positively brutal.  No, certainly I did not enjoy it.  However, I am rewarded by finding you here.”

“I am very much flattered.”

Lord Minster fixed his eye-glass firmly in his eye, planted his hands at the bottom of his trousers pockets, and, clearing his throat, placed himself in the attitude that was so familiar to the House, and began.

“Mrs. Carr, I told you, when last I had the pleasure of seeing you, that I should take the first opportunity of renewing a conversation that I was forced to suspend in order to attend, if my memory serves me, a very important committee meeting.  I was therefore surprised, indeed I may almost say hurt, when I found that you had suddenly flitted from London.”

“Indeed, Lord Minster?”

“I will not, however, take up the time of this—­I mean your time, by recapitulating all that I told you on that occasion; the facts are, so to speak, all upon the table, and I will merely touch upon the main heads of my case.  My prospects are these:  I am now a member of the Cabinet, and enjoy, owing to the unusual but calculated recklessness of my non-official public utterances, an extraordinary popularity with a large section of the country, the hungry section to which I alluded last night.  It is probable that the course of the present Government is pretty