"Well, take my advice, my dear lady," said the Solicitor-General, speaking with lazy patronage somewhere from the depths of comfort,--he was accustomed to use these paternal modes of speech to young women,--"don't you miss your husband's speeches. We can't do without our domestic critics. But for the bad quarters of an hour that lady over there has given me, I should be nowhere." And he nodded complacently towards the wife as stout as himself, who was sitting a few yards away. She, hearing her name, nodded back, with smiles aside to the bystanders. Most of the spectators, however, were already acquainted with a conjugal pose which was generally believed to be not according to facts, and no one took the cue. Then presently Mr. Bennett--the workmen's member from the North--was at Letty's elbow saying the most cordial things of the absent George. Bayle, too, the most immaculate and exclusive of private secretaries, who was at the Court on a wedding visit with a new wife, chose to remember Lady Tressady's existence for the first time for many months, and to bestow some of his carefully adapted conversation upon her. While, last of all, Edward Watton came up to her with a cousinly kindness she had scarcely yet received from him, and, drawing a chair beside her, overflowed with talk about George, and the Bill, and the state of things at Market Malford. In fact, it was soon clear even to Letty's bewildered sense that till her husband should arrive she was perhaps, for the moment, the person of most interest to this brilliant and representative gathering of a victorious party. Meanwhile she was made constantly aware that her hostess remembered her. Once, as Marcella passed her, after introducing someone to her, Letty felt a hand gently laid on her shoulder and then withdrawn. Strange waves of emotion ran through the girl's senses. When would George be here? About seven, she thought, when they would all have gone up to dress. He would have arrived from Wildheim in the morning, and was to spend the day doing business in town. CHAPTER XXII Letty was lying on a sofa in her bedroom. Her maid was to come to her shortly, and she was impatiently listening to every sound that approached or passed her door. The great clock in the distant hall struck seven, and it seemed to her intolerably long before she heard movements in the passage, and then Maxwell's voice outside. "Here is your room, Sir George. I hope you don't mind a few ghosts! It is one of the oldest bits of the house." Letty sprang up. She heard the shutting of the passage door, then immediately afterwards the door from the dressing-room opened, and George came through. "Well!" she said, staring at him, her face flushing; "surely you are very late?" He came up to her, and put his arms round her, while she stood passive. "Not so very," he said, and she could hear that his voice was unsteady. "How are you? Give me a kiss, little woman--be a little glad to see me!"