“The deuce you do,” said Gleam. A quick glance passed between them, and a shade of annoyance came over Goddard’s dark face. The analogy perhaps was closer than he intended. The other might retort with the gibes of Jacques. “Of course it isn’t my business,” added Gleam in a deprecating tone. “But it might have been better for you to have waited--considering the change in your fortune, and your scheme of life generally. Well, I suppose folks will marry. It is even within the bounds of possibility I may do it myself one of these days.” He put up his eye-glass and passed his fingers over his tight fair moustache, as if to prepare himself for the ordeal. “It won’t interfere with any of our plans, I can assure you,” said Goddard. “That’s right. Don’t let it, for goodness’ sake. But marriage is a function of two independent variables, as they say in the differential calculus--and a deuced tough function too. Anyhow, if you’re bent upon it, I wish you luck.” They shook hands and parted. Goddard turned away slowly. The Member’s words sounded again the note of warning, the same note that had rung in those of the old man on the previous day, the same that had rung in his own ears. “But I should have been a knave to have done differently,” he thought to himself. “There was only one alternative.” He had deliberately chosen the part of the fool. “I am damned glad,” he said aloud, swinging his stick. “I’ll walk straight, now and ever afterwards, whatever happens.” Three weeks afterwards they were married, and Lizzie’s wedding-dress, to her trembling joy, was fully described in the _Sunington Weekly Chronicle_. CHAPTER IV--LADY PHAYRE AND THE COMING MAN “I WISH something new would happen,” said Lady Phayre. “There is the session just begun,” replied Mr. Aloysius Gleam, drawing his arm-chair an inch nearer the fire. “We can promise you many New Year novelties.” “Call you them novelties?” asked Lady Phayre. “They will be as old as--as the antepenultimate barrel-organ tune.” “You want to go too fast. Great political reforms move slowly.” “Yes, that is true--deadeningly true. I think I read it once in a newspaper.” Gleam laughed, and spread out his hands before the blaze. He was familiar with her mood--a mild spiritual unrest, induced by supreme bodily comfort and intellectual disturbance. He had the faculty of the aesthetic as well as ultrademocratic tendencies, and he appreciated the harmony between her mood and the dim afternoon hour with its gathering shadows in comers of the room. Her comfortable attitude, with one hand hanging over the arm of the chair; her costume, a dark fur-edged tea-gown; her expression of wistful meditation--all betokened a relaxation of fibre trying to pamper itself into depression. So the Member laughed, and a smile played round his clean-shaven lips in the silence that followed.