"At last!" Miss Beadon said. "I thought you were never coming." She was standing near the door, awaiting Farquharson’s entry. She knew the value of a convenient position. "We have hardly seen anything of you of late." For once she was a trifle nervous. "But I’ve read all your speeches. Father has told me how splendidly you’ve got on." Not the ideal woman this, but a woman who at least could sympathize, who would not need to be taught the necessities of her position. Farquharson looked at her gravely. Something of her self-complacency had left her; she was nervous and a little tremulous as to the result of this meeting, for which she had plotted so eagerly. "I have something to say to you," he said. "I must speak to these people first, and then—— See, there are chairs in that little recess. Will you wait for me there in ten minutes’ time?" *CHAPTER III* "Youth from the windows of his innocence Sent forth his soul to scan the future years. Homeward it brings this strange intelligence— ’In life there are no tears.’ We who are older, shake our heads and say ’Another tale, we know, we who are men.’ But haply Youth espies the deathless years, Seeing beyond our ken." "I am not sorry that, after all, you were not there," wrote Lady Wereminster to Hare, a few weeks later. "The Burial Service always strikes me as comparatively gay when matched with the amended Marriage Service of the Church of England. The one gives hope; the other preaches duty instead. There is no romance in it, no mysticism. You are practically told it is your duty to marry because you are not good enough to remain unmarried, that you must bring children into the world because it would look so remarkably odd if you did not. As to the meaning of it all, whether it is to the glory of God or your next-door neighbour, the advertisement editor of the _Morning Post_ is the best judge. Anyway, he is the person who immediately benefits. "Did I tell you that Richard Farquharson and Dora Beadon were indissolubly united at St. Margaret’s, Westminster, yesterday afternoon, by the bye? I suppose you read all in the papers; there was fuss enough, in all conscience. Miss Beadon saw to that. I dislike that girl more than ever. Is there anything more annoying than the incompetence of a woman who cannot fill the position she was born to? "And now what will happen? I feel responsible, having set the machinery in motion. As a girl, I played with lives quite easily; it amused me to turn fate, or juggle with purposes the meaning of which I could not fathom. Now, in old age, I have grown afraid. Souls are such tiresome things. I know old Akbar said, ’I never saw any one lost on a straight road,’ but occasionally one wonders if there are any straight roads left, now the County Council has played so many tricks with London streets?