If the Ilberts were going to take her up!--to exploit the book! The Ilberts belonged to the young Tory party which his soul detested, or he said so in his wrath; as a matter of fact, he had not many detestations, and in the matter of politics he had no personal rancours.

Yet at the moment he thought he had, and fancied that a part of his indignation was because Mary Gray, who had learnt in the Radical school, was going to be made much of by advanced Tories.

As he sat in his hansom, "stepping westward" into the heart of the sunset, he bit the ends of his moustache, and it was like chewing the cud of bitterness.

Mary Gray had expanded to answer the genial warmth of Mrs.Ilbert's manner as a flower opens to the sun.
It was not in her to be ungracious, and Mrs.Ilbert was a charming woman.
And now he asked himself what was he going to do for the next month or six weeks till his mother and Nelly came home?
All the winter he had been in the habit of seeing Mary Gray two or three times a week.

He had been home a week from Lugano, and he had kept away; and all the time something stronger than himself had seemed to be tugging at him to take the old familiar road.