“And how many will be there at dinner, ma’am,” asked Mrs. Massarene, feeling hot all over, as she would have expressed it, at the prospect of this banquet. “Oh, well, I can’t say. I’ll see who will come. You have a very good _chef_, haven’t you? If not I could get you Van Holstein’s. You know when people are well fed once they’ll come to be fed again, and they tell others.” “Just like fowls,” murmured Mrs. Massarene, her mind reverting to the poultry yard of her youth, with the hens running over and upsetting each other in their haste to get to the meal-pan. She was sensible of an awakening interest of a warmer tinge in the manner of her protectress, since the subject of good things in the City had been broached. “You mustn’t want to go too fast at once,” continued that fair lady. “It’s like cycling. You’ll wobble about and get a good many falls at first. But you’ve begun well. You’ve a beautiful house, and you have my cousin’s place, in the heart of a hunting county. Several of the county people have asked me about the purchaser of Vale Royal, and I have always said something nice about you both. You know I have been four months on the Nile, and one sees the whole world there; such a climate as this is to return to after Egypt! Why weren’t you in Egypt? Oh, I forgot; your man’s member for Limehouse, isn’t he? I wonder the party hasn’t done more for you. But, you see, money alone, unless there is tact---- Well, I dare say I can’t make you understand if I talk till doomsday; I have two or three people the night after to-morrow. I will send you a card. And, by the way, you had better tell Khris to call on me if he be in town. I will talk over with him what we can do for you.” Mr. Winter, standing within earshot, at a discreet distance, to all appearance as bereft of sight and hearing, and impervious as a statue to all sight and sounds, lost not a syllable uttered by Lady Kenilworth, and approved of all. “It is clever of her,” he thought, “to be ready to go halves in the spoils with that old prince. Meet him half way, she does; mighty clever that; she’ll cut his claws and draw his teeth. She’s a lady of the right sort, she is. If she weren’t quite so clever she’d have him jealous of him and have made an enemy of him at the onset.” His employer meantime was exhausting her somewhat limited vocabulary in agitated thanks and protestations of undying gratitude which Lady Kenilworth nipped in the bud by giving her two fingers chillily and hurrying away, her farewell glance being cast at the golden water-vase. “Khris a house decorator and I a tout! How very dreadful it is! But hard times make strange trades,” thought the young mother of Jack and Boo, as she sank down on the soft seat of her little brougham, and was borne swiftly away to other houses, as the lamps begun to shine through the foggy evening air. CHAPTER III.