Almost at once they asked some people to stay there to help with the elections and the pheasant shooting. The elections were hoped for in December. Urquhart did not propose to bother much about them; he was a good deal more interested in the pheasants; but he had, of course, every intention of doing the usual and suitable things, and carrying the business through well. Lucy only laughed; to want to get into Parliament was so funny, looked at from the point of view she had always been used to. Denis, being used by inheritance and upbringing to another point of view, did not see that it was so funny; to him it was a very natural profession for a man to go into; his family had always provided a supply of members for both houses. Lucy and Peter, socially more obscure, laughed childishly together over it. "Fancy being a Liberal or a Conservative out of all the things there are in the world to be!" as Peter had once commented. But it was delightfully Urquhart-like, this lordly assumption of a share in the government of a country. No doubt it was worth having, because all the things Urquhart wanted and obtained were that; he had an eye for good things, like Peter, only he gained possession of them, and Peter could only admire from afar. They were talking about the election prospects at dinner on the evening of the fifteenth of November. They were a young and merry party. At one end of the table was Denis, looking rather pale after a hard day's hunting, and very much amused with life; at the other Lucy, in a white frock, small and open-eyed like a flower, and very much amused too; and between them were the people, young mostly, and gay, who were staying with them. Lucy, who had been brought up in a secluded Bohemianism, found it very funny and nice having a house-party, and so many servants to see after them all that one needn't bother to run round and make sure everyone had soap, and so on. One person, not young, who was staying there, was Lord Evelyn Urquhart. Lucy loved him. He loved her, and told funny stories. Sometimes, between the stories, she would catch his near-sighted, screwed up eyes scanning her face with a queer expression that might have been wistfulness; he seemed at times to be looking for something in her face, and finding it. Particularly when she laughed, in her chuckling, gurgling way, he looked like this, and would grow grave suddenly. They had talked together about all manner of things, being excellent friends, but only once so far about Lucy's cousin Peter. Once had been too much, Lucy had found. The Margerisons were a tabooed subject with Lord Evelyn Urquhart.