Tallente, obeying an urgent telephone message, made his way to Claridge's and sent his card up to his wife. Her maid came down and invited him to her suite, an invitation which he promptly declined. In about a quarter of an hour she descended to the lounge, dressed for the street. She showed no signs of confusion or nervousness at his visit. She was hard and cold and fair, with a fraudulent smile upon her lips, dressed to perfection, her maid hovering in the background with a Pekinese under one arm and a jewel case in her other hand. "Thank goodness," she said, as she fluttered into a chair by his side, "that you hate scenes even more than I do! You have the air of a man who has found out no end of disagreeable things!" "You are observant," he answered drily. "I have just come from the Prime Minister." "Well?" "I find that Palliser has been conducting a regular conspiracy behind my back, with reference to this wretched peerage. He has practically forged my name and has placed me in a most humiliating position. You, I suppose, were his instigator in this matter?" "I suppose I was," she admitted. "What was to be his reward--his ulterior reward, I mean?" "I promised him twenty thousand pounds," she answered, with cold fury. "It appears that I overvalued your importance to your party. Tony apparently did the same. He thought that you had only to intimate your readiness to accept a peerage and the thing would be arranged. It seems that we were wrong." "You were doubly wrong," he replied. "In the first place, there were difficulties, and in the second, nothing would have induced me to accept such a humiliating offer." "How did you find this out?" she enquired. "The Prime Minister offered me the peerage less than an hour ago," he answered. "I need not say that I unhesitatingly refused it." Stella ceased buttoning her gloves. There was a cold glitter in her eyes. "You refused it?" "Of course!" She was silent for a moment. "Andrew," she said, "you have scarcely kept your bargain with me." "I am not prepared to admit that," he replied. "You had a very considerable social position at the time when I was in office. It was up to you to make that good." "I am tired of political society," she answered. "It isn't the real thing. Now you are out of Parliament, though, even that has vanished. Andrew!" "Well?" She leaned a little towards him. She began to regret that he had not accepted her invitation to visit her in her suite. Years ago she had been able to bend him sometimes to her will. Why should she take it for granted that she had lost her power? Here, however, even persuasions were difficult. He sat upon a straight, high-backed chair by her side and his face seemed as though it were carved out of stone.