“Well, the beggar will scarcely come up at Highmead for a third licking,” observed the Hon. Tolshunt.

“No, poor Walter,” said Lady Chelmer.  “He thought he’d be sure to get in this time, but he’s quite crushed now.  Wasn’t it actually two thousand votes less than last time?”

“Two thousand and thirty-three,” replied Lord Woodham, with punctilious inaccuracy.

Involuntarily Amber’s eyes turned in search of the crushed candidate whom she almost saw flattened beneath the 2033 votes, and whom it would scarcely have been a surprise to find asquat under a carriage, humbly assisting the footmen to pack the dirty plates.  But before she had time to decide which of the unlively men, loitering round the carriages or helping stout old dowagers up slim iron ladders, was sufficiently lugubrious to be identified as the martyr of the ballot-box, she was absorbed by a tall, masterful figure, whose face had the radiance of easeful success, and whose hands were clapping at some nuance of style which had escaped the palms of the great circular mob.

“I can’t see any Walter Bassett,” she murmured absently.

“Why, you are staring straight at him,” said Lady Chelmer.

Miss Roan did not reply, but her face was eloquent of her astonishment, and when her face spoke, it was with that vivacity which is the American accent of beauty.  What wonder if the Hon. Tolshunt Darcy paid heed to it, although he liked what it said less than the form of expression!  As he used to put it in after days, “She gave one look, and threw herself away from the top of that drag.”  The more literal truth was that she drew Walter Bassett up to the top of that drag.

Lady Chelmer protested in vain that she could not halloo to the man.

“You knew his mother,” Amber replied.  “And he’s got no seat.”

“Quite symbolical!  He, he, he!” and the old Marquis chuckled and cackled in solitary amusement.  “Let’s offer him one,” he went on, half to enjoy the joke a little longer, half to utilise the opportunity of bringing his Ministerial wisdom to bear upon this erratic young man.

“I don’t see where there’s room,” said the Hon. Tolshunt Darcy, sulkily.

“There’s room on the front bench,” cackled the Marquis, shaking his sides.

“Oh, I don’t want you to roll off for him,” said Miss Roan, who treated Ministerial Marquises with a contempt that bred in them a delightful sense of familiarity.  “Tolshunt can sit opposite me—­he’s stared at the cricket long enough.”

Tolshunt blushed with apparent irrelevance.  But even the prospect of staring at Amber more comfortably did not reconcile him to displacement.  “It’s so awkward meeting a fellow who’s had a tumble,” he grumbled.  “It’s like having to condole with a man fresh from a funeral.”

“There doesn’t seem much black about Walter Bassett,” Amber laughed.  And at this moment—­the dull end of a “maiden over”—­the radiant personage in question turned his head, and perceiving Lady Chelmer’s massive smile, acknowledged her recognition with respectful superiority, whereupon her Ladyship beckoned him with her best parasol manner.