Behind him had come in a tall woman, of full figure and fine presence, with hair still brown—­Lady Valleys herself.  Though her eldest son was thirty, she was, herself, still little more than fifty.  From her voice, manner, and whole personality, one might suspect that she had been an acknowledged beauty; but there was now more than a suspicion of maturity about her almost jovial face, with its full grey-blue eyes; and coarsened complexion.  Good comrade, and essentially ‘woman of the world,’ was written on every line of her, and in every tone of her voice.  She was indeed a figure suggestive of open air and generous living, endowed with abundant energy, and not devoid of humour.  It was she who answered Agatha’s remark.

“Of course, my dear, the very best thing possible.”

Lord Harbinger chimed in: 

“By the way, Brabrook’s going to speak on it.  Did you ever hear him, Lady Agatha?  ’Mr. Speaker, Sir, I rise—­and with me rises the democratic principle——­’”

But Agatha only smiled, for she was thinking: 

“If I let Ann go as far as the gate, she’ll only make it a stepping-stone to something else to-morrow.”  Taking no interest in public affairs, her inherited craving for command had resorted for expression to a meticulous ordering of household matters.  It was indeed a cult with her, a passion—­as though she felt herself a sort of figurehead to national domesticity; the leader of a patriotic movement.

Lord Valleys, having finished what seemed necessary, arose.

“Any message to your mother, Gertrude?”

“No, I wrote last night.”

“Tell Miltoun to keep—­an eye on that Mr. Courtier.  I heard him speak one day—­he’s rather good.”

Lady Valleys, who had not yet sat down, accompanied her husband to the door.

“By the way, I’ve told Mother about this woman, Geoff.”

“Was it necessary?”

“Well, I think so; I’m uneasy—­after all, Mother has some influence with Miltoun.”

Lord Valleys shrugged his shoulders, and slightly squeezing his wife’s arm, went out.

Though himself vaguely uneasy on that very subject, he was a man who did not go to meet disturbance.  He had the nerves which seem to be no nerves at all—­especially found in those of his class who have much to do with horses.  He temperamentally regarded the evil of the day as quite sufficient to it.  Moreover, his eldest son was a riddle that he had long given up, so far as women were concerned.

Emerging into the outer hall, he lingered a moment, remembering that he had not seen his younger and favourite daughter.

“Lady Barbara down yet?” Hearing that she was not, he slipped into the motor coat held for him by Simmons, and stepped out under the white portico, decorated by the Caradoc hawks in stone.

The voice of little Ann reached him, clear and high above the smothered whirring of the car.