“Either they give themselves airs—­rediculous airs!—­or they admit everybody!” she said, with a lavish use of white shoulders and scarlet fan by way of emphasis.  “My husband feels it just as much as I do.  It is a real misfortune for the party that its social affairs should be so villainously managed.  Oh!  I dare say you don’t mind, Mr. Wharton, because you are a Socialist.  But, I assure you, those of us who still believe in the influence of the best people don’t like it.”

A point whence Wharton easily led her through a series of spiteful anecdotes bearing on her own social mishaps and rebuffs, which were none the less illuminating because of the teller’s anxious effort to give them a dignified and disinterested air.  Then, when neither she nor her plight were any longer amusing, he took his leave, exchanging another skirmishing word or two on the staircase with Lady Selina, who it appeared was “going on” as he was, and to the same house.

In a few minutes his hansom landed him at the door of a great mansion in Berkeley Square, where a huge evening party was proceeding, given by one of those Liberal ladies whom his late hostess had been so freely denouncing.  The lady and the house belonged to a man who had held high office in the late Administration.

As he made his way slowly to the top of the crowded stairs, the stately woman in white satin and diamonds who was “receiving” on the landing marked him, and when his name was announced she came forward a step or two.  Nothing could have been more flattering than the smile with which she gave him her gloved hand to touch.

“Have you been out of town all these Sundays?” she said to him, with the slightest air of soft reproach.  “I am always at home, you know—­I told you so!”

She spoke with the ease of one who could afford to make whatever social advances she pleased.  Wharton excused himself, and they chatted a little in the intervals of her perpetual greetings to the mounting crowd.  She and he had met at a famous country house in the Easter recess, and her aristocrat’s instinct for all that gives savour and sharpness to the dish of life had marked him at once.

“Sir Hugh wants you to come down and see us in Sussex,” she said, stretching her white neck a little to speak after him, as he was at last carried through the drawing-room door by the pressure behind him.  “Will you?”

He threw back an answer which she rather took for granted than heard, for she nodded and smiled through it—­stiffening her delicate-face the moment afterwards to meet the timid remarks of one of her husband’s constituents—­asked by Sir Hugh in the streets that afternoon—­who happened to present her with the next hand to shake.

Inside, Wharton soon found himself brought up against the ex-Secretary of State himself, who greeted him cordially, and then bantered him a little on his coming motion.

“Oh, I shall be interested to see what you make of it.  But, you know, it has no actuality—­never can have—­till you can agree among yourselves.  You say you want the same thing—­I dare say you’ll all swear it on Friday—­but really—­”