"Yet you are not a misanthrope, you do not hate people." "I don't admire them." "You would like to help them to become more admirable. Ah! The Anglo-Saxon is strong within you. You are not at all like Renan. And then you went in for Parliamentary honors too; three years ago, wasn't it? Why didn't you keep on?" "Because I didn't keep my seat when my party went out. The honors were dubious, Miss Archinard. I cut a very ineffective figure." "I remember meeting a man here at the time who said you weren't 'practical,' and I liked you for it too. If only you had kept in we should surely have met. Hilda and I were in London this spring." "Were you? And I was in Japan. I only got back three weeks ago." "How you do dash about the globe. But you have been to Allersley since getting back?" "Only for a day or two. But tell me about your spring in London." "We were with Lady Mainwaring." "Ah, I did not see her when I was at Allersley. That accounts for my having had no news of you. You did not see my sister in London; she has been in the country all this year. You went to Court, I suppose?" "Yes, Lady Mainwaring presented us." "And Hilda enjoyed herself?" Katherine smiled: "How glad you will be to see Hilda. Yes, enjoyed herself after a fashion, I think. She only stopped a month. She doesn't care much for that sort of thing really." Katherine did not say, hardly knew perhaps, that the reproachful complaint of Mrs. Archinard's weekly letter had cut short Hilda's season, and brought her back to the little room in the little _appartement, 3ième au dessus de l'entresol_, where Mrs. Archinard spent her days as she had spent them at Allersley, at Dresden, at Dinard, at Florence. Change of surroundings made no change in Mrs. Archinard's lace-frilled recumbency, nor in the air of passive long-suffering that went with so much appreciation of her own merits and other people's deficiencies. "But Hilda's month meant more than other girls' years," Katherine went on; "you may imagine the havoc she played, all unconsciously, poor Hilda! Hilda is the most unconscious person. She fixes one with those big vague eyes of hers. She fixed, among other people, another old friend," and Katherine smiled, adding with lowered tone, "Allan Hope." Peter was not enough conscious of a certain inner irritation to attempt its concealment. "Allan Hope?" he repeated. "It is impossible for me to imagine little Hilda with lovers; and Allan Hope one of them!" "Allan Hope is very nice," Katherine said lightly. "Nice? Oh, thoroughly nice. But to think that Hilda is grown up, not a child." Odd looked with a certain tired playfulness at Katherine. "And you are grown up too; have lovers too. What a pity it is."