“David--David is coming,” he cried, in a voice that rang. “Does thee hear, Faith? Davy is coming home!” A woman laughed exultantly. It was not Faith. But still two years passed before David came. CHAPTER XVIII. TIME, THE IDOL-BREAKER Lord Windlehurst looked meditatively round the crowded and brilliant salon. His host, the Foreign Minister, had gathered in the vast golden chamber the most notable people of a most notable season, and in as critical a period of the world’s politics as had been known for a quarter of a century. After a moment’s survey, the ex-Prime-Minister turned to answer the frank and caustic words addressed to him by the Duchess of Snowdon concerning the Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs. Presently he said: “But there is method in his haste, dear lady. He is good at his dangerous game. He plays high, he plunges; but, somehow, he makes it do. I’ve been in Parliament a generation or so, and I’ve never known an amateur more daring and skilful. I should have given him office had I remained in power. Look at him, and tell me if he wouldn’t have been worth the backing.” As Lord Windlehurst uttered the last word with an arid smile, he looked quizzically at the central figure of a group of people gaily talking. The Duchess impatiently tapped her knee with a fan. “Be thankful you haven’t got him on your conscience,” she rejoined. “I call Eglington unscrupulous and unreliable. He has but one god--getting on; and he has got on, with a vengeance. Whenever I look at that dear thing he’s married, I feel there’s no trusting Providence, who seems to make the deserving a footstool for the undeserving. I’ve known Hylda since she was ten, and I’ve known him since the minute he came into the world, and I’ve got the measure of both. She is the finest essence the middle class can distil, and he, oh, he’s paraffin-vin ordinaire, if you like it better, a selfish, calculating adventurer!” Lord Windlehurst chuckled mordantly. “Adventurer! That’s what they called me--with more reason. I spotted him as soon as he spoke in the House. There was devilry in him, and unscrupulousness, as you say; but, I confess, I thought it would give way to the more profitable habit of integrity, and that some cause would seize him, make him sincere and mistaken, and give him a few falls. But in that he was more original than I thought. He is superior to convictions. You don’t think he married yonder Queen of Hearts from conviction, do you?” He nodded towards a corner where Hylda, under a great palm, and backed by a bank of flowers, stood surrounded by a group of people palpably amused and interested; for she had a reputation for wit--a wit that never hurt, and irony that was only whimsical. “No, there you are wrong,” the Duchess answered. “He married from conviction, if ever a man did. Look at her beauty, look at her fortune, listen to her tongue. Don’t you think conviction was easy?”