CHAPTER VIII.
Not till three o'clock that Saturday did the Bigwigs begin to come.
Lord and Lady Britto first from Erne by car; then Sir Gerald and Lady Malloring, also by car from Joyfields; an early afternoon train brought three members of the Lower House, who liked a round of golf--Colonel Martlett, Mr.Sleesor, and Sir John Fanfar--with their wives; also Miss Bawtrey, an American who went everywhere; and Moorsome, the landscape-painter, a short, very heavy man who went nowhere, and that in almost perfect silence, which he afterward avenged.

By a train almost sure to bring no one else came Literature in Public Affairs, alone, Henry Wiltram, whom some believed to have been the very first to have ideas about the land.

He was followed in the last possible train by Cuthcott, the advanced editor, in his habitual hurry, and Lady Maude Ughtred in her beauty.

Clara was pleased, and said to Stanley, while dressing, that almost every shade of opinion about the land was represented this week-end.

She was not, she said, afraid of anything, if she could keep Henry Wiltram and Cuthcott apart.