Naseby threw a glance of laughing inquiry at his companion. George shrugged his shoulders in silence. It had become matter of public remark during the last few days that Fontenoy was beginning at last to show the strain of the combat--that his speeches were growing hysterical and his rule a tyranny. His most trusted followers were now to be heard grumbling in private over certain aspects of his bearing in the House. He had come into damaging collision with the Speaker on one or two occasions, and had made here and there a blunder in tactics which seemed to show a weakening of self-command. Tressady, indeed, knew enough to wonder that the man's nerve and coolness had maintained themselves in their fulness so long. "So Maxwell took a party to the North?" said George, dropping the subject of Fontenoy. "Lady Maxwell, of course--myself, Bennett, and Madeleine Penley. It was a pleasure to see Lady Maxwell. She has been dreadfully depressed in town lately. But those trade-union meetings in Lancashire and Yorkshire were magnificent enough to cheer anyone up." George shook his head. "I expect they come too late to save the Bill." "I daresay. Well, one can't help being tremendously sorry for her. I thought her looking quite thin and ill over it. It makes one doubt about women in politics! Maxwell will take it a deal more calmly, unless one misunderstands his cool ways. But I shouldn't wonder if _she_ had a breakdown." George made no reply. Naseby talked a little more about Maxwell and the tour, the critical side of him gaining upon the sympathetic with every sentence. At the corner of King Street he stopped. "I must go back to the club. By the way, have you heard anything of Ancoats lately?" George made a face. "I saw him in a hansom last night, late, crossing Regent Circus with a young woman--_the_ young woman, to the best of my belief." In the few moments' chat that followed Tressady found that Naseby, like Fontenoy, regarded him as the new friend who might be able to do something for a wild fellow, now that mother and old friends were alike put aside and ignored. But, as he rather impatiently declared--and was glad to declare--such a view was mere nonsense. He had tried, for the mother's sake, and could do nothing. As for him, he believed the thing was very much a piece of _blague_-- "Which won't prevent it from taking him to the devil," said Naseby, coolly; "and his mother, by all accounts, will die of it. I'm sorry for her. He seems to think tremendous things of you. I thought you might, perhaps, have knocked it out of him." George shook his head again, and they parted.