The shadow passed from Cynthia. She was disappointed now, but not hurt; and in a second the disappointment passed too. This was not the day on which small things should be allowed to sting. "Now you'll have some tea," said Brook. "No, I don't think I will stay any longer to-day, Mr. Brook," she replied. Now that her fears were dispersed she was in a hurry to get away and be alone with her new secret. "I am keeping you from the House, and you are our Whip, aren't you?" The flattery did not compensate Mr. Brook for his loss. The privilege of parading a pretty and well-dressed woman before the envious eyes of less fortunate colleagues is one which no member of Parliament, not even its sedatest representative of non-conformity, would forego without regret; and in a remote philandering way, Robert Brook was a kind of lady's man. Cynthia was wearing a trim coat and skirt of dark velvet, and from a coil of fur about her throat her face rose like a summer flower, and was framed in the wide border of her blue hat. "My duties are light just now," he protested, but Cynthia lifted up her hands in her great muff appealingly and coaxed him. "You will let me go now, Mr. Brook, won't you?" Her eyes besought his permission as though without it she could not go, and Mr. Brook was duly reduced to subservience. "Good-by," said Cynthia, and she swung off, the long ends of her stole swinging about her hips, and her step indescribably light. Robert Brook watched her pass down the corridor to the rails where the visitors waited, and sighed in a melancholy fashion. It seemed to him for the moment contemptible to be a bachelor. For there was something strangely appealing about Cynthia, to-day--a winsomeness, a warmth. She seemed all a-quiver with youth. A swift variety of moods swept across her face in lights and shadows, and gave to her vitality. Her feet moved with a dancing buoyancy. All that Robert Brook felt the sandy-haired man from the Shires summarized in one reflective sentence: "I should like to kiss that girl," he said. "It would do me a great deal of good." CHAPTER XXX THE LETTER