So now she understood all that during the two preceding months had increasingly perplexed her. Arthur had been laid hands on by the temptress just before his maiden speech in Parliament, and had done no good ever since. At the time when his mother had inflicted a social stigma as public as she could make it on a Minister who in her eyes deserved impeachment, by refusing to go through even the ordinary conventions of allowing him to arm her down to dinner and take his seat beside her at a large London party, Arthur was courting the daughter of the criminal; and the daughter was no doubt looking forward with glee to the moment of her equally public triumph over his mother. Lady Coryston remembered the large mocking eyes of Enid Glenwilliam, as seen amid the shadows of a dark drawing-room, about a fortnight later than the dinner-party, when with a consistency which seemed to her natural, and also from a wish to spare the girl's feelings, she had declined to be introduced, at the suggestion of another blundering hostess, to Glenwilliam's daughter. And all the time--all the time--the handsome, repellent creature was holding Arthur's life and Arthur's career in the hollow of her hand! Well, she would not hold them so for long. Lady Coryston said to herself that she perfectly understood what Miss Glenwilliam was after. The circumstances of Coryston's disinheritance were now well known to many people; the prospects of the younger son were understood. The Glenwilliams were poor; the prospects of the party doubtful; the girl ambitious. To lay hands on the Coryston estates and the position which a Coryston marriage could give the daughter of the Yorkshire check-weigher--the temptation had only to be stated to be realized. And, no doubt, in addition, there would be the sweetness--for such persons as the Glenwilliams--of a planned and successful revenge. Well, the scheme was simple; but the remedy was simple also. The Martover meeting was still rather more than three weeks off. But she understood from Page that after it the Chancellor and his daughter were to spend the week-end at the cottage on the hill, belonging to that odious person, Dr. Atherstone. A note sent on their arrival would prepare the way for an interview, and an interview that could not be refused. No time was to be lost, unless Arthur's political prospects were to be completely and irretrievably ruined. The mere whisper of such a courtship, in the embittered state of politics, would be quite enough to lose him his seat--to destroy that slender balance of votes on the right side, which the country districts supplied, to neutralize the sour radicalism of the small towns in his division.