“Oh!  So she has gone into complete seclusion from all her friends?”

“That I can’t answer for.  I can only tell you my own experience.”

Lady Selina bethought herself of a great many more questions to ask, but somehow did not ask them.  The talk fell upon politics, which lasted till the hostess gave the signal, and Lady Selina, gathering up her fan and gloves, swept from the room next after the Countess at the head of the table, while a host of elderly ladies, wives of ministers and the like, stood meekly by to let her pass.

As he sat down again, Wharton made the entry of the dinner at Alresford House, to which he had just promised himself, a little plainer.  It was the second time in three weeks that Lady Selina had asked him, and he was well aware that several other men at this dinner-table, of about the same standing and prospects as himself, would be very glad to be in his place.  Lady Selina, though she was unmarried, and not particularly handsome or particularly charming, was a personage—­and knew it.  As the mistress of her father’s various fine houses, and the kinswoman of half the great families of England, she had ample social opportunities, and made, on the whole, clever use of them.  She was not exactly popular, but in her day she had been extremely useful to many, and her invitations were prized.  Wharton had been introduced to her at the beginning of this, his second session, had adopted with her the easy, aggressive, “personal” manner—­which, on the whole, was his natural manner towards women—­and had found it immediately successful.

When he had replaced his pocket-book, he found himself approached by a man on his own side of the table, a member of Parliament like himself, with whom he was on moderately friendly terms.

“Your motion comes on next Friday, I think,” said the new-comer.

Wharton nodded.

“It’ll be a beastly queer division,” said the other—­“a precious lot of cross-voting.”

“That’ll be the way with that kind of question for a good while to come—­don’t you think”—­said Wharton, smiling, “till we get a complete reorganisation of parties?”

As he leaned back in his chair, enjoying his cigarette, his half-shut eyes behind the curls of smoke made a good-humoured but contemptuous study of his companion.

Mr. Bateson was a young manufacturer, recently returned to Parliament, and newly married.  He had an open, ruddy face, spoilt by an expression of chronic perplexity, which was almost fretfulness.  Not that the countenance was without shrewdness; but it suggested that the man had ambitions far beyond his powers of performance, and already knew himself to be inadequate.

“Well, I shouldn’t wonder if you get a considerable vote,” he resumed, after a pause; “it’s like women’s suffrage.  People will go on voting for this kind of thing, till there seems a chance of getting it. Then!”

“Ah, well!” said Wharton, easily, “I see we shan’t get you.”