“Our opponents are engaged in a hopelessly uphill struggle, and they know it,” he chirruped, defiantly; “they’ve become possessed, like the Gadarene swine, with a whole legion of—­”

“Surely the Gadarene swine went downhill,” put in Lady Caroline in a gently enquiring voice.

Henry Greech hastily abandoned simile and fell back on platitude and the safer kinds of fact.

Francesca did not regard her brother’s views on statecraft either in the light of gospel or revelation; as Comus once remarked, they more usually suggested exodus.  In the present instance she found distraction in a renewed scrutiny of the girl opposite her, who seemed to be only moderately interested in the conversational efforts of the diners on either side of her.  Comus who was looking and talking his best, was sitting at the further end of the table, and Francesca was quick to notice in which direction the girl’s glances were continually straying.  Once or twice the eyes of the young people met and a swift flush of pleasure and a half-smile that spoke of good understanding came to the heiress’s face.  It did not need the gift of the traditional intuition of her sex to enable Francesca to guess that the girl with the desirable banking account was already considerably attracted by the lively young Pagan who had, when he cared to practise it, such an art of winning admiration.  For the first time for many, many months Francesca saw her son’s prospects in a rose-coloured setting, and she began, unconsciously, to wonder exactly how much wealth was summed up in the expressive label “almost indecently rich.”  A wife with a really large fortune and a correspondingly big dower of character and ambition, might, perhaps, succeed in turning Comus’s latent energies into a groove which would provide him, if not with a career, at least with an occupation, and the young serious face opposite looked as if its owner lacked neither character or ambition.  Francesca’s speculations took a more personal turn.  Out of the well-filled coffers with which her imagination was toying, an inconsiderable sum might eventually be devoted to the leasing, or even perhaps the purchase of, the house in Blue Street when the present convenient arrangement should have come to an end, and Francesca and the Van der Meulen would not be obliged to seek fresh quarters.

A woman’s voice, talking in a discreet undertone on the other side of Courtenay Youghal, broke in on her bridge-building.

“Tons of money and really very presentable.  Just the wife for a rising young politician.  Go in and win her before she’s snapped up by some fortune hunter.”