It was Sunday evening, and the lawn at Riversdale was brilliantly crowded. The last returns had come in the day before, and the Conservatives had even increased their already immense majority. Every one in the set that congregated to Mildred's house was delighted, and there was a general sense of relaxation abroad, which might have degenerated into flatness, had there not been so many other amusing things to think about. The season was practically at an end, and, like a flock of birds who have denuded some pasture of its wire-worms, every one was preparing, that feeding-ground finished with, to break up into smaller patches and fly to the various quarters of the globe. Guardina and Pagani had both of them, oddly enough, developed signs--not serious--of an identical species of gouty rheumatism, and had been ordered to Homburg for a fortnight by the same doctor, who was a man not without shrewdness. The Breretons were going a round of Scotch visits in the middle of the month, Jack Alston and his wife were doing the same, and Lady Devereux was consulting Arthur Naseby as to the possibility of being at Cowes and Bayreuth for the same days in the same week. They thought it could be done. Lady Ardingly alone was going to fly nowhere. She proposed to take a rest-cure at her country house for a fortnight, and, with a view to securing herself from all worry and ennui, had engaged four strong people to play Bridge continually, and was on the look-out for a fifth table, who would make her party complete. Amid all these plans for the future there was but little time to look backwards, and all the events of the last month, the last week, the last day even, were stale. The opera was over, and Guardina, instead of living her triumphs o'er again, was only thinking about Homburg, and the various delightful ways in which she could spend the very considerable sum of money she had earned. She was almost as good at spending as she was at earning, and she promised herself an agreeable autumn. The election, similarly, was a stale subject; every one who mattered at all had got his seat, including Jim Spencer, and the only thing connected with Parliament which was of any interest was Jack's seat in the Cabinet. Only yesterday he had been semi-officially asked whether he would take the War Office, and he had replied that he had not the slightest objection. He, too, felt agreeably relaxed, and disposed to take things easily. He had slaved at the work and been rewarded; his tendency was to eat, drink, and be merry. Another chain of circumstances also conduced to the propriety of this. He had made a second attempt to enter into more tender relations with his wife, and again she had visibly shrunk from him. And with the bitterness of that, and the relaxation which followed his success, there had come mingled the suggestion of consoling himself.