Palmet and Beauchamp went to their fish and meat; smoked a cigarette or two afterward, conjured away the smell of tobacco from their persons as well as they could, and betook themselves to the assembly-room of the Liberal party, where the young lord had an opportunity of beholding Mr. Cougham, and of listening to him for an hour and forty minutes.  He heard Mr. Timothy Turbot likewise.  And Miss Denham was present.  Lord Palmet applauded when she smiled.  When she looked attentive he was deeply studious.  Her expression of fatigue under the sonorous ring of statistics poured out from Cougham was translated by Palmet into yawns and sighs of a profoundly fraternal sympathy.  Her face quickened on the rising of Beauchamp to speak.  She kept eye on him all the while, as Palmet, with the skill of an adept in disguising his petty larceny of the optics, did on her.  Twice or thrice she looked pained:  Beauchamp was hesitating for the word.  Once she looked startled and shut her eyes:  a hiss had sounded; Beauchamp sprang on it as if enlivened by hostility, and dominated the factious note.  Thereat she turned to a gentleman sitting beside her; apparently they agreed that some incident had occurred characteristic of Nevil Beauchamp; for whom, however, it was not a brilliant evening.  He was very well able to account for it, and did so, after he had walked a few steps with Miss Denham on her homeward way.

’You heard Cougham, Palmet!  He’s my senior, and I’m obliged to come second to him, and how am I to have a chance when he has drenched the audience for close upon a couple of hours!’

Palmet mimicked the manner of Cougham.

‘They cry for Turbot naturally; they want a relief,’ Beauchamp groaned.

Palmet gave an imitation of Timothy Turbot.

He was an admirable mimic, perfectly spontaneous, without stressing any points, and Beauchamp was provoked to laugh his discontentment with the evening out of recollection.

But a grave matter troubled Palmet’s head.

‘Who was that fellow who walked off with Miss Denham?’

‘A married man,’ said Beauchamp:  ’badly married; more ’s the pity; he has a wife in the madhouse.  His name is Lydiard.’

‘Not her brother!  Where’s her uncle?’

’She won’t let him come to these meetings.  It’s her idea; well-intended, but wrong, I think.  She’s afraid that Dr. Shrapnel will alarm the moderate Liberals and damage Radical me.’

Palmet muttered between his teeth, ’What queer things they let their women do!’ He felt compelled to say, ’Odd for her to be walking home at night with a fellow like that.’

It chimed too consonantly with a feeling of Beauchamp’s, to repress which he replied:  ’Your ideas about women are simply barbarous, Palmet.  Why shouldn’t she?  Her uncle places his confidence in the man, and in her.  Isn’t that better—­ten times more likely to call out the sense of honour and loyalty, than the distrust and the scandal going on in your class?’