"I refuse to be depressed even by your solemn looks," she declared. "It is my twenty-fourth birthday to-day and I am still young enough to cling to my optimism." "Your birthday," he remarked. "I should have brought you an offering." She held up the roses. "Nothing in the world," she assured him softly, "could have given me more pleasure than these. Now I am going to take you first into a little den where you will not be disturbed, and then fetch my uncle," she added, as they passed into the house. "I shall pray for your mutual conversion. You won't mind a very feminine room, will you? Just now there are certain to be callers at any moment, and my uncle's rooms are liable to all manner of intrusions." She threw open the door and ushered him into what seemed indeed to be a little fairy chamber, a chamber with yellow walls and yellow rug, white furniture, oddments of china and photographs, silver-grey etchings, water-colour landscapes, piles of books and magazines. On a small table stood a yellow Sevres vase, full of roses. "It's a horrible place for a man to sit in," she said, looking around her. "You must take that wicker chair and throw away as many cushions as you like. Now I am going to fetch my uncle, and remember, please," she concluded, looking back at him from the door, "if I have seemed frivolous this morning, I am not always so. More than anything I am looking forward, down at Lyndwood, to have you, if you will, talk to me seriously." "Shall I dare to argue with you, I wonder?" he asked. She smiled at him. "Why not? A matter of courage?" "The bravest person in the world," he declared, "remembers always that little proverb about discretion." CHAPTER VIII The conference between Mr. Foley and Maraton was brief enough. The former arrived a few moments after his niece's departure. "I have come," Maraton announced, as they shook hands, "to accept your invitation to Lyndwood. You understand, I am sure, that that commits me to nothing?" Mr. Foley's expression was one of intense relief. "Naturally," he replied. "I quite understand that. I am delighted to think that you are coming at all. May I ask whether you have conferred with your friends about the matter?" Maraton shook his head. "I have not even mentioned it to them. I met what I understand to be a committee of the Labour Party this morning--a Mr. Dale, Abraham Weavel, Culvain, Samuel Borden and David Ross. Those were the names so far as I can remember. I did not mention my proposed visit to you at all. There seemed to me to be no necessity. I am subject to no one here." Mr. Foley smiled. "They won't like it," he declared frankly. "Their liking or disliking it will not affect the situation in the least," Maraton assured him. "I shall come, without a doubt. It will interest me to hear what you have to say, although unfortunately I cannot hold out the slightest hope--"