There is a queer perverted pleasure in scratching an open wound, in cutting off one’s nose to spite one’s face. He had meant to be generous and he wanted still to be generous, but the money he had laid aside for generosity was now hypothecated to meet her claim. He would give her her pound of flesh, but wanted very badly to roast it for her with coals of fire. Gloom lifted from him suddenly. He took off the old tie which he had put on as being good enough to travel in, and fastened very carefully one which he had bought “for London.” “I’ll do it,” he was thinking. “It is--almost--a stroke.” At breakfast he was positively gay, so that Ada wondered furtively what he was up to, and whether the way to raise his spirits would always be to demand new clothes of him. It did not seem likely, but she proposed at any rate to experiment freely in that direction. He divided his attention between her, breakfast, and the Parliamentary report of the _Times_. He felt that he had virtually participated in that debate, and even the shock of reading that the division had gone against his hero did not spoil the pleasure he found in reading of it. He read with a prophetic eye. He, too, would be reported in the _Times_ some day. He called the waiter. “Marmalade, sir?” asked the man. “No, thanks. Bring me the directory.” “The directory,” protested the waiter, “is in the reading-room.” “And I,” said Sam superbly, “am in the coffee-room.” The waiter brought him the directory. Sam smiled broadly. He was testing his form, and decided that if it were equal to coercing a waiter into carrying a directory to his breakfast-table, it would probably not fail him in what he proposed to do. He consulted the book and noted an address which was not, he observed, in Park Lane. His respect for Sir William Gatenby suffered a slight decline. Half an hour later he rang the hell of that gentleman’s house. Gatenby was the local member, to whom Peter Struggles had written for Sam’s pass to the Gallery. “Sir William in?” he asked. “Yes, but----” A trained eye observed his clothes. They were not cut in Savile Row. “He will see me,” said Sam serenely. Some people are at their best in the early morning. His card was accepted from him, and he was shown into a library of severe Blue Books, possibly qualified by a reproduction of Millais’ portrait of Gladstone. Ordinarily, Sam would have been met in the library by a secretary who earned his salary by his talent for administering polite snubs to unwanted callers. The secretary was not earning his salary to-day, but, probably, spending it. It was Derby Day. After all, a vote is a vote, and Sir William came in with a show of geniality. “Good morning, Mr. Branstone,” he said, reading Sam’s card. “From the old town. I see.” “Is that all you remember about me?” asked Sam. “At the moment,” confessed Sir William warily. His majority was not large. “Well,” said Sam, “the Reverend Mr. Struggles is my father-in-law.”