Terence, with his arm round Sara, who shrank at the uproarious din, took her glass, and, pressing to his lips the place where hers had touched it, whispered in her ear--then in that of Madam Gillin: 'To the diffusion of Light--may it break upon us soon!' Then--silence being with difficulty restored--Lord Clare stood up to speak. He surveyed the assemblage for a moment, casting his eagle eye on one and then another as though to consider how best to touch the sympathies and flick the raws of so incongruous a gathering. The attention of all was riveted on his smiling face, for a murmur had flitted along the lines like a breeze over corn, which was an echo of Arthur Wolfe's surmise. There was something behind--some intelligence of moment--the divulging of which the all-powerful lord chancellor had expressly reserved to himself. 'It is nearly twelve o'clock,' he said at length, in the rasping voice which set so many people's teeth on edge. 'We have gone through a year of trouble and anxiety, and are on the eve of a new one, which, I trust, will prove vastly different from that which is now dying. I will venture to propose a toast to you--gentlemen and ladies all--which may at first seem a riddle--but which you will, I know, all join with me in drinking, trusting to a satisfactory solution. I beg you to drink to the Wind.' The chancellor paused--one white hand upon his hip--to mark the effect of his exordium. Young' officers banged applause upon the table, not knowing why they did it, save that the leading spirit who guided them seemed to expect the silence to be broken. Arthur Wolfe made bread-pills with feverish absentness. Curran placed his hand behind his ear, and leaned forward with impatient anxiety. Doreen sat, her hands folded in her lap, staring before her into space. 'I give you the Wind,' the chancellor went on, with the clear coldness of a glacier rivulet 'because those who deplore the evil which has gathered of late like a mist over our unhappy country, will have to thank the wind for driving it away, and leaving a clear atmosphere. Alas! I cannot say that the horizon is as yet quite clear--small cloudlets float still upon the waters--but those heavy banks of rain, which we have all feared would drench us presently, are in mercy put to rout, and it is the wind that we have to thank for it. "The French are on the sea, said the Shan van Vocht." So runs the ditty which was in all careless mouths to-day. Well! I am authorised by his excellency's goodness to tell you that the French _are_ on the sea--but flying back to their native ports by this time in every phase of discomfiture and distress.' A pause--while the doves shivered. Girls drew their feet into safety under chairs, and pushed away--shuddering--the importunate hands of British aides-de-camp.