’Old Bask’s the captain of us?  Very well, but where do we drive the teams?  How many are we?  What’s in hand?’

Cecilia threw a hurried glance at her hostess.

Luckily some witling said, ‘Fours-in-hand!’ and so dryly that it passed for humour, and gave Mrs. Lespel time to interpose.  ’You are not to know till to-morrow, Ernest.’

Palmet had traced the authorship of the sally to Mr. Algy Borolick, and crowned him with praise for it.  He asked, ‘Why not know till to-morrow?’ A word in a murmur from Mr. Culbrett, ‘Don’t frighten the women,’ satisfied him, though why it should he could not have imagined.

Mrs. Lespel quitted the breakfast-table before the setting in of the dangerous five minutes of conversation over its ruins, and spoke to her husband, who contested the necessity for secresy, but yielded to her judgement when it was backed by Stukely Culbrett.  Soon after Lord Palmet found himself encountered by evasions and witticisms, in spite of the absence of the ladies, upon every attempt he made to get some light regarding the destination of the four-in-hands next day.

‘What are you going to do?’ he said to Mr. Devereux, thinking him the likeliest one to grow confidential in private.

‘Smoke,’ resounded from the depths of that gentleman.

Palmet recollected the ground of division between the beautiful brunette and her lord—­his addiction to the pipe in perpetuity, and deemed it sweeter to be with the lady.

She and Miss Halkett were walking in the garden.

Miss Halkett said to him:  ’How wrong of you to betray the secrets of your friend!  Is he really making way?’

‘Beauchamp will head the poll to a certainty,’ Palmet replied.

‘Still,’ said Miss Halkett, ’you should not forget that you are not in the house of a Liberal.  Did you canvass in the town or the suburbs?’

’Everywhere.  I assure you, Miss Halkett, there’s a feeling for Beauchamp—­they’re in love with him!’

‘He promises them everything, I suppose?’

’Not he.  And the odd thing is, it isn’t the Radicals he catches.  He won’t go against the game laws for them, and he won’t cut down army and navy.  So the Radicals yell at him.  One confessed he had sold his vote for five pounds last election:  “you shall have it for the same,” says he, “for you’re all humbugs.”  Beauchamp took him by the throat and shook him—­metaphorically, you know.  But as for the tradesmen, he’s their hero; bakers especially.’

‘Mr. Austin may be right, then!’ Cecilia reflected aloud.

She went to Mrs. Lespel to repeat what she had extracted from Palmet, after warning the latter not, in common loyalty, to converse about his canvass with Beauchamp.

‘Did you speak of Mr. Lydiard as Captain Beauchamp’s friend?’ Mrs. Devereux inquired of him.

’Lydiard? why, he was the man who made off with that pretty Miss Denham,’ said Palmet.  ’I have the greatest trouble to remember them all; but it was not a day wasted.  Now I know politics.  Shall we ride or walk?  You will let me have the happiness?  I’m so unlucky; I rarely meet you!’