“Don’t worry,” Lorraine laughed. “He is improving every day under my tuition. I hope you can say as much for Sir Edwin.” “I can,” she answered frankly. “He has learnt quite a lot since I took him in hand; especially about women and the vote. He has positively made the discovery that they don’t all want it just for notoriety, and novelty; but I’m afraid he won’t succeed in convincing the other dense old gentlemen in the Cabinet. Good-bye!” “Be circumspect, O Youth and Beauty. And don’t let him over-eat himself, Lorry,” she finished, as she departed. CHAPTER XXVI When Hermon was finding fault with Hal’s friendship for Sir Edwin Crathie, it had not apparently occured to him that his own friends and relations were likely enough to take precisely the same view of his friendship with Lorraine Vivian. He did not want to think it, any more than Hal had done, and therefore he conveniently ignored the probability, and indulged in the reflection that anyhow they were never likely to hear of it. Yet it was through them, and their ill-chosen mode of interference, that the first trouble arose, when that quiet, peaceful winter was over, and the spring arrived with renewing and vigour, and with new happenings in other beside the natural world. It was as though the one gladsome winter of pleasant companionship and firesides was given to them all—Dudley and Hal, Ethel and Basil, Lorraine and Hermon—before the wider issues of the future stepped in and claimed their toll of sorrow before they gave the deeper joys. Alymer Hermon’s father and mother were at this time living in a charming house at Sevenoaks, whither he went at least once a week to see them. His father had become more or less of a recluse, enjoying a quiet old age with his books; but his mother was an energetic, bigoted lady of the old school, who had allowed much natural kindliness to become absorbed in her devotion to church precepts and church works. When it first reached her ears that her only son, of boundless hopes and dreams, was continually with the actress Lorraine Vivian, she was horrified beyond words. Undoubtedly the story had been much magnified and embroidered, and accepted as a scandalous liaison or entanglement without any inquiry. To make matters worse, Mrs. Hermon belonged so thoroughly to the old school that she could not even distinguish between a clever celebrated actress and a chorus girl. The stage, to her, was a synonym which included all things theatrical in one comprehensive ban of immorality and vice, with degrees, of course, but in no case without deserving censure from the eminently respectable, well-born British matron. She could not have been more upset had the heroine of the story been the under housemaid; and indeed she placed actressess and housemaids in much the same category.