Commons was an official livery of which he divested himself as
thoroughly as possible in private life. He did not propose to sit

through dinner as a mere listener to Mr. Thorle's personal
narrative of philanthropic movements and experiences, and took the

first opportunity of launching himself into a flow of satirical
observations on current political affairs. Lady Veula was inured

to this sort of thing in her own home circle, and sat listening
with the stoical indifference with which an Esquimau might accept

the occurrence of one snowstorm the more, in the course of an
Arctic winter. Serena Golackly felt a certain relief at the fact

that her imported guest was not, after all, monopolising the
conversation. But the latter was too determined a personality to

allow himself to be thrust aside for many minutes by the talkative
M.P. Henry Greech paused for an instant to chuckle at one of his

own shafts of satire, and immediately Thorle's penetrating voice
swept across the table.

"Oh, you politicians!" he exclaimed, with pleasant superiority;
"you are always fighting about how things should be done, and the

consequence is you are never able to do anything. Would you like
me to tell you what a Unitarian horsedealer said to me at Brindisi

about politicians?"
A Unitarian horsedealer at Brindisi had all the allurement of the

unexpected. Henry Greech's witticisms at the expense of the Front
Opposition bench were destined to remain as unfinished as his

wife's history of the broken soup-plates. Thorle was primed with
an ample succession of stories and themes, chiefly concerning

poverty, thriftlessness, reclamation, reformed characters, and so
forth, which carried him in an almost uninterrupted sequence

through the remainder of the dinner.
"What I want to do is to make people think," he said, turning his

prominent eyes on to his hostess; "it's so hard to make people
think."

"At any rate you give them the opportunity," said Comus,
cryptically.

As the ladies rose to leave the table Comus crossed over to pick up
one of Lady Veula's gloves that had fallen to the floor.

"I did not know you kept a dog," said Lady Veula.
"We don't," said Comus, "there isn't one in the house."

"I could have sworn I saw one follow you across the hall this
evening," she said.

"A small black dog, something like a schipperke?" asked Comus in a
low voice.

"Yes, that was it."
"I saw it myself to-night; it ran from behind my chair just as I

was sitting down. Don't say anything to the others about it; it
would frighten my mother."

"Have you ever seen it before?" Lady Veula asked quickly.
"Once, when I was six years old. It followed my father

downstairs."
Lady Veula said nothing. She knew that Comus had lost his father

at the age of six.
In the drawing-room Serena made nervous excuses for her talkative

friend.
"Really, rather an interesting man, you know, and up to the eyes in

all sorts of movements. Just the sort of person to turn loose at a
drawing-room meeting, or to send down to a mission-hall in some

unheard-of neighbourhood. Given a sounding-board and a harmonium,
and a titled woman of some sort in the chair, and he'll be

perfectly happy; I must say I hadn't realised how overpowering he
might be at a small dinner-party."

"I should say he was a very good man," said Mrs. Greech; she had
forgiven the mutilation of her soup-plate story.

The party broke up early as most of the guests had other
engagements to keep. With a belatedrecognition of the farewell

nature of the occasion they made pleasant little good-bye remarks
to Comus, with the usual predictions of prosperity and

anticipations of an ultimate auspicious return. Even Henry Greech
sank his personal dislike of the boy for the moment, and made

hearty jocular allusions to a home-coming, which, in the elder
man's eyes, seemed possibly pleasantlyremote. Lady Veula alone

made no reference to the future; she simply said, "Good-bye,
Comus," but her voice was the kindest of all and he responded with

a look of gratitude. The weariness in her eyes was more marked
than ever as she lay back against the cushions of her carriage.

"What a tragedy life is," she said, aloud to herself.
Serena and Stephen Thorle were the last to leave, and Francesca

stood alone for a moment at the head of the stairway watching Comus
laughing and chatting as he escorted the departing guests to the

door. The ice-wall was melting under the influence of coming
separation, and never had he looked more adorably handsome in her

eyes, never had his merry laugh and mischief-loving gaiety seemed
more infectious than on this night of his farewellbanquet. She

was glad enough that he was going away from a life of idleness and
extravagance and temptation, but she began to suspect that she

would miss, for a little while at any rate, the high-spirited boy
who could be so attractive in his better moods. Her impulse, after

the guests had gone, was to call him to her and hold him once more
in her arms, and repeat her wishes for his happiness and good-luck

in the land he was going to, and her promise of his welcome back,
some not too distant day, to the land he was leaving. She wanted

to forget, and to make him forget, the months of irritable jangling
and sharp discussions, the months of cold aloofness and

indifference and to remember only that he was her own dear Comus as
in the days of yore, before he had grown from an unmanageable

pickle into a weariful problem. But she feared lest she should
break down, and she did not wish to cloud his light-hearted gaiety

on the very eve of his departure. She watched him for a moment as
he stood in the hall, settling his tie before a mirror, and then

went quietly back to her drawing-room. It had not been a very
successful dinner party, and the general effect it had left on her

was one of depression.
Comus, with a livelymusical-comedy air on his lips, and a look of

wretchedness in his eyes, went out to visit the haunts that he was
leaving so soon.

CHAPTER XV
ELAINE YOUGHAL sat at lunch in the Speise Saal of one of Vienna's

costlier hotels. The double-headed eagle, with its "K.u.K."
legend, everywhere met the eye and announced the imperial favour in

which the establishment basked. Some several square yards of
yellow bunting, charged with the image of another double-headed

eagle, floating from the highest flag-staff above the building,
betrayed to the initiated the fact that a Russian Grand Duke was

concealed somewhere on the premises. Unannounced by heraldic
symbolism but unconcealable by reason of nature's own blazonry,

were several citizens and citizenesses of the great republic of the
Western world. One or two Cobdenite members of the British

Parliament engaged in the useful task of proving that the cost of
living in Vienna was on an exorbitant scale, flitted with

restrained importance through a land whose fatness they had come to
spy out; every fancied over-charge in their bills was welcome as

providing another nail in the coffin of their fiscal opponents. It
is the glory of democracies that they may be misled but never

driven. Here and there, like brave deeds in a dust-patterned
world, flashed and glittered the sumptuous uniforms of

representatives of the Austrian military caste. Also in evidence,
at discreet intervals, were stray units of the Semetic tribe that

nineteen centuries of European neglect had been unable to mislay.
Elaine sitting with Courtenay at an elaborately appointed luncheon

table, gay with high goblets of Bohemian glassware, was mistress of
three discoveries. First, to her disappointment, that if you

frequent the more expensive hotels of Europe you must be prepared
to find, in whatever country you may chance to be staying, a

depressing internationallikeness between them all. Secondly, to
her relief, that one is not expected to be sentimentally amorous

during a modern honeymoon. Thirdly, rather to her dismay, that