He smiled at her with upraised eyebrows.  There were times when he seemed to her like a boy.

“Haven’t you discovered it?”

She made a little face and swung her parasol around.  When she spoke again, she was very grave.

“Mr. Maraton,” she begged, “please will you promise that before you go away, you will talk to me again for a few minutes?”

“It is a promise easily made!” he replied.

“But I mean seriously.”

“I will talk to you at any time, anyhow you wish,” he promised.

She rose to her feet then.

“For the present you have promised to play tennis,” she reminded him.  “Please go and change your things.”

“I must have a yellow rosebud for my button-hole,” he begged.

She arranged it herself in his coat.  He laughed as she swept aside a wisp of her hair which brushed his cheek.

“What a picture for the photographic Press of America!” he exclaimed.  “The anarchist of Chicago and the Prime Minister’s niece!”

“What is an anarchist?” she asked him abruptly.  He opened the little iron gate which led out of the garden.

“A sower of fire and destruction,” he answered, “a highly unpleasant person to meet when he’s in earnest.”

She looked into his face for a moment with a wistfulness which was almost passionate.

“Please tell me at once, that you aren’t—­”

He pointed back to the garden.

“We have come out of the land of confessions.  On this side of the gate I am your uncle’s guest, and I mustn’t be teased with questions.”

“Before you go,” she threatened, “I shall take you back into the rose-garden.”

From their wicker chairs drawn under a great cedar tree, Mr. Foley and Lord Armley, perhaps the most distinguished of his colleagues, watched the slow approach of the two from the flower gardens.  Lord Armley, who had only arrived during the last half hour, was recovering from a fit of astonishment.  He had just been told of his fellow guest.

“Granted, even, that the man is as dangerous as you say,” he remarked, “it is certainly creating a new precedent for you to bring him into the bosom of your family.  Is it conversion, bribery, or poison that you have in your thoughts?”

“Influence, if possible,” Mr. Foley answered.  “Somehow or other, I have always detected in his writing a vein of common sense.”

“What the dickens is common sense!” Lord Armley growled.

“Shall I say a sense of the fitness of things?” the Prime Minister replied,—­“a sense of proportion, perhaps?  Notwithstanding his extraordinary speeches in America, I believe that to some extent Maraton possesses it.  Anyhow, it seemed to me to be worth trying.  One couldn’t face the idea of letting him go up north just now without making an effort.”

“Things are really serious there,” Lord Armley muttered.

“Worse than any of us know,” Mr. Foley agreed.  “If you hadn’t been coming here, I should have sent for you last night.  The French Ambassador was with me for an hour after dinner.”