"No doubt Dartrey would enlighten you, if you chose to go to him," was the indifferent reply. "Within the course of the next few months we shall launch our thunderbolt. You will know then what we claim for the people." "Hang the people!" Horlock exclaimed. "I've legislated for them myself until I'm sick of it. They're never grateful." "Perhaps you confine yourself too much to one class," Tallente observed drily. "As a rule, the less intelligent the voter, the more easily he is caught by flashy legislation." "The operative pure and simple," Horlock announced, "has no political outlook. He'll never see beyond his trades union. You'll never found a great national party with his aid." His companion smiled. "Then we shall fail and you will continue to be Prime Minister." Mrs. Van Fosdyke came back to them, on the arm of a foreign diplomat. She leaned over to Horlock and whispered: "Lethbridge has heard that you two are here together and he is on your track. Better separate." She passed on. The two men strolled away. "Have you any personal feeling against me, Tallente?" Horlock asked. "None whatever," his companion assured him. "You did me the best turn in your life when you left me stranded after Hellesfield." Horlock sighed. "Lethbridge almost insisted, he looked upon you as a firebrand. He said there would be no repose about a Cabinet with you in it." "Well, it's turned out for the best," Tallente remarked drily. "Au revoir!" On his way back to the reception rooms, an acquaintance tapped him on the shoulder. "One moment, Tallente. Lady Alice Mountgarron has asked me to present you." Tallente bowed before the woman who stood looking at him pleasantly, but a little curiously. She held out her hand. "I seem to have heard so much of you from my sister Jane," she said. "You are neighbours in Devonshire, aren't you?" "Neighbours from a Devon man's point of view," he answered. "I live half-way down a precipice, and she five miles away, at the back of a Stygian moor, and incidentally a thousand feet above me." "You seem to have surmounted such geographical obstacles." "Your sister's friendship is worth greater efforts," Tallente replied. Lady Alice smiled. "I wish that some of you could persuade her to come to town occasionally," she said. "Jane is a perfect dear, of course, and I know she does a great deal of good down there, but I can't help thinking sometimes that she is a little wasted. Life must now and then be dreary for her." Tallente seemed for a moment to be looking through the walls of the room. "We are all made differently. Lady Jane is very self-reliant and Devonshire is one of those counties which have a curiously strong local hold." "But when her moors and her farms are under snow, and Woolhanger is wreathed in mists, and one hears nothing except the moaning of animals in distress, what about the local attraction then?"