"One assumption you make I should like to contest. You imagine, I think, that if they carry the prohibition and the hours clauses we shall be able to whip up a still fiercer attack on the 'landlords' clause. Now, that isn't my view." Fontenoy turned upon him, startled. "Why isn't it your view?" he said abruptly. "Because there are always waverers who will accept a _fait accompli_; and you know how opposition has a trick of cooling towards the end of a Bill. Maxwell has carried his main point, they will say; this is a question of machinery. Besides, many of those Liberals who will be with us on the main point don't love the landlords. No! don't flatter yourself that, if we lose the main engagement, there will be any Prussians to bring up. The thing will be done." "Well, thank God!" grumbled Fontenoy, "we don't mean to lose the main engagement. But if one of _our_ men were to argue in that way, I should know what to say to him." George made no reply. They walked on in silence, the summer twilight falling softly over the river and the Hospital, over the Terrace with its groups, and the towering pile of buildings beside them. Presently Fontenoy said, in another voice: "I have really never had the courage to talk to you of the matter, Tressady, but didn't you see something of that lad Ancoats before he went off abroad?" "Yes, I saw him several times, first at the club; then he came and dined with me here one night." "And did he confide in you?" "More or less," said George, smiling rather queerly at the recollection. Fontenoy made a sound between a growl and a sigh. "Really, it's rather too much to have to think out that young man's affairs as well as one's own. And the situation is so extraordinary!--Maxwell and I have to be in constant consultation. I went to see him in his room in the House of Lords the other night, and met a man coming out, who stopped, and stared as though he were shot. Luckily I knew him, and could say a word to him, or there would have been all sorts of cock-and-bull stories abroad." "Well, and what are you and Maxwell doing?" "Trying to get at the young woman. One can't buy her off, of course. Ancoats is his own master, and could outbid us. But Maxwell has found a brother--a decent sort of fellow--a country solicitor. And there is a Ritualist curate, a Father somebody,"--Fontenoy raised his shoulders,--"who seems to have an intermittent hold on the girl. When she has fits of virtue she goes to confess to him. Maxwell has got hold of _him_." "And meanwhile Ancoats is at Bad Wildheim?" "Ancoats is at Bad Wildheim, and behaving himself, as I hear from his poor mother." Fontenoy sighed. "But the boy was frightened, of course, when they went abroad. Now she is getting better, and one can't tell--" "No, one can't tell," said George. "I wish I knew what the thing really _meant_," said Fontenoy, presently, in a tone of perplexed reverie. "What do you think? Is it a passion--?" "Or a pose?" George pondered.