As luck would have it, a day or two after Vin’s return to town, Mr. Ogden came to dine at Grosvenor Place. It was a man’s dinner—a dinner of political extremists and faddists; but so far from Master Vincent retiring to his own room and his books, as he sometimes did, he joined the party, and even stipulated for a place next the great electioneerer and wire-puller of the North. Further than that, he made himself most agreeable to Mr. Ogden: was most meek and humble and good-humoured (for to what deeps of hypocrisy will not a young man descend when he is madly in love?), and seemed to swallow wholesale the long-resounding list of Reforms—Reforms Administrative, Reforms Electoral, Reforms Fiscal, Reforms Social and Political. For all the while he was saying within himself: ’My dear sir, perhaps what you say is quite true: and we’re all going headlong to the devil—with the caucus for drag. And I could wish you to have a few more A’s: still, many excellent men have lived and died without them. The main point is this—if one might dare to ask—Is your Private Secretaryship still open; and, if so, what salary would you propose to give?’ But, of course, he could not quite ask those questions at his own father’s dinner-table; besides, he was in no hurry; he wanted a few more days to look round. The guests of this evening did not go up to the drawing-room; they remained in the dining-room, smoking, until it was time for them to leave: then Harland Harris and his son found themselves alone together. Now the relations between father and son had been very considerably strained since the morning on which the former had brought his allegations against old George Bethune and his granddaughter; but on this occasion Vincent was in a particularly amiable and generous mood. He was pleased with himself for having paid court to Mr. Ogden; he looked forward with some natural gratification to this early chance of getting into Parliament; and, again, what was the use of attaching any importance to those preposterous charges? So he lit another cigarette; stretched out his legs before the fire; and told his father—but with certain reservations, for on one or two points he was pledged to silence—what had happened down at Mendover.