“She is the most charming girl in the world,” remarked Ella to the visitor, who remained when Phyllis had left.

“Is she?” said he.

“I know it.  Don’t you?” asked she.

“How do I know?” he said.  “I have thought nothing about it.  If you say she is charming, I am pleased to hear it.  It matters no more to me that the world is full of charming girls than that the kraken is still at the bottom of the sea.  One woman fills all my thoughts.  My heart is full of her.”

“And you want her to risk the salvation of her soul for you?”

“Yes; that is just what I want.”

He remained with her for another hour.

CHAPTER XIV.

THE HONORABLE MEMBER IS CLEARLY OUT OF ORDER.

Mr. Ayrton met his daughter the next morning with the good news that he had found among his specimen cases of phrases, one that would effectually silence the member from Wales who had been nominated by the Nonconformist Eastern Missionary Society to put that question to the minister of the Annexation Department on the subject of Mr. Courtland, the explorer.  Mr. Ayrton was the better pleased at his discovery, because of the inoffensive nature of the phrase which he had taken out of its case, so to speak.  As a rule, he did not mind being offensive if only his phrase was apt.  Only people who had no artistic appreciation found fault with the tone of some of his most notable phrases.  He did not mind whether they were just or unjust, they said.  As if a man can be both honest and witty at the same time!

It so happened, however, that the party to which Mr. Ayrton belonged had become greatly concerned in respect of an element that had just come to the surface to still further complicate the course of politics.  This was the Nonconformist Conscience—­hitherto a quantite negligeable in the calculations of the leaders, but now one that it appeared absolutely necessary to take into account as a factor.  To be sure, there were a good many people who put their tongues in their cheeks when any mention was made of the Nonconformist Conscience:  they said it was no more to be taken seriously than the Spector on the Brocken or the Athanasian Creed.  It was only the trick of an electioneering agent desirous of escaping from an untenable position.

There were other persons, however (mostly Nonconformists), who were found ready to declare that the Nonconformist Conscience was a Great and Living Truth.  The only point upon which statesmen of all parties were agreed was that it was worth purchasing.  The Nonconformists themselves, upon whom the Great and Living Truth was sprung, had no notion at first that it could be turned into a negotiable security occupying as high a place in the market as, say, Argentine bonds.  But it did not take them very long to find out that even an abstraction such as this could be turned to good account by discreet maneuvering.  Truth sometimes