"My position is not exactly agreeable! I don't agree with Ferrier, and I do agree with the malcontents. Moreover, when we come in, they will represent the strongest element in the party, with the future in their hands." Lady Lucy looked at him with sparkling eyes. "You can't desert him, Oliver!--not you!" "Perhaps I'd better drop out of Parliament!" he said, impatiently. "The game sometimes doesn't seem worth the candle." Lady Lucy--alarmed--laid a hand on his. "Don't say those things, Oliver. You know you have never done so well as this year." "Yes--up to two months ago." His mother withdrew her hand. She perfectly understood. Oliver often allowed himself allusions of this kind, and the relations of mother and son were not thereby improved. Silence reigned for a few minutes. With a hand that shook slightly, Lady Lucy drew toward her a small piece of knitting she had been occupied with when Marsham came in, and resumed it. Meanwhile there flashed through his mind one of those recollections that are only apparently incongruous. He was thinking of a dinner-party which his mother had given the night before; a vast dinner of twenty people; all well-fed, prosperous, moderately distinguished, and, in his opinion, less than moderately amused. The dinner had dragged; the guests had left early; and he had come back to the drawing-room after seeing off the last of them, stifled with yawns. Waste of food, waste of money, waste of time--waste of everything! He had suddenly been seized with a passionate sense of the dulness of his home life; with a wonder how long he could go on submitting to it. And as he recalled these feelings--as of dust in the mouth--there struck across them an image from a dream-world. Diana sat at the head of the long table; Diana in white, with her slender neck, and the blue eyes, with their dear short-sighted look, her smile, and the masses of her dark hair. The dull faces on either side faded away; the lights, the flowers were for her--for her alone! He roused himself with an effort. His mother was putting up her knitting, which, indeed, she had only pretended to work at. "We must go and dress, Oliver. Oh! I forgot to tell you--Alicia arrived an hour ago." "Ah!" He raised his eyebrows indifferently. "I hope she's well?" "Brilliantly well--and as handsome as ever." "Any love-affairs?" "Several, apparently--but nothing suitable," said Lady Lucy, with a smile, as she rose and gathered together her possessions. "It's time, I think, that Alicia made up her mind. She has been out a good while."