“You feared they were finding their afternoon tedious?”

“No; but I think their watches were up the spout, you see.  So I was sorry.  I never feel so sorry for myself as when mine is.  I’m really awfully grateful to Leslie; if it wasn’t for him I should never be able to tell anyone the time.  By the way, Leslie’s awfully fond of Felicity.  He writes her enormous cheques for her clubs and vagabonds and so on.  But of course she’ll never look at him; he’s much too well-off.  It’s not low to tell you that, because he makes it so awfully obvious.  He’ll probably be there this afternoon.  Oh, here we are.”

They found the Hopes’ small drawing-room filled much as Peter had predicted.  Dermot Hope was a tall, wasted-looking man of fifty-five, with brilliant eyes giving significance to a vague face.  He had very little money, and spent that little on “Progress,” whose readers were few and ardent, and whose contributors were very cosmopolitan, and full of zeal and fire; several of them were here this afternoon.  Dermot Hope himself was most unconquerably full of fire.  He could be delightful, and exceedingly disagreeable, full of genial sympathy and appreciation, and of a biting irony.  He looked at Urquhart, whom he met for the first time, with a touch of sarcasm in his smile.  He said, “You’re exactly like your father.  How do you do,” and seemed to take no further interest in him.  He had certainly never taken much in Lord Hugh, during the brief year of their brotherhood.

For Peter his glance was indulgent.  Peter, not being himself a reformer, or an idealist, or a lover of progress, or even, according to himself, of liberty, but an acceptor of things as they are and a lover of the good things of this world, was not particularly interesting to his uncle, of course; but, being rather an endearing boy, and the son of a beloved sister, he was loved; and, even had he been a stranger, his position would have been regarded as more respectable than Urquhart’s, since he had so far failed to secure many good things.

Felicity, a gracious and lovely person of twenty-nine, gave Peter and Urquhart a smile out of her violet eyes and murmured “Lucy’s in the corner over there,” and resumed the conversation she was trying to divide between Joseph Leslie and a young English professor who was having a holiday from stirring up revolutions at a Polish university.  The division was not altogether easy, even to a person of Felicity’s extraordinary tact, particularly as they both happened to be in love with her.  Felicity had a great deal of listening to do always, because everyone told her about themselves, and she always heard them gladly; if she hastened the end a little sometimes, gently, they never knew it.  She, in fact, wanted to hear about them as much—­really as much, though the desire in these proportions is so rare as to seem incredible—­as they wanted to let her hear.  Her wish to hear was a temptation to egotism; those