At the same moment a guest entered by the same door, a tall grave man in the prime of life, but already grey haired.  Wharton, to his surprise, recognised Aldous Raeburn, and saw also that the master of the house had him by the arm.  They came towards him, talking.  The crowd prevented him from getting effectually out of their way, but he turned aside and took up a magazine lying on a bookcase near.

“And you really think him a trifle better?” said the ex-minister.

“Oh, yes, better—­certainly better—­but I am afraid he will hardly get back to work this session—­the doctors talk of sending him away at once.”

“Ah, well,” said the other, smiling, “we don’t intend it seems to let you send anything important up to the Lords yet awhile, so there will be time for him to recruit.”

“I wish I was confident about the recruiting,” said Raeburn, sadly.  “He has lost much strength.  I shall go with them to the Italian lakes at the end of next week, see them settled and come back at once.”

“Shall you miss a sitting of the commission?” asked his host.  Both he and Raeburn were members of an important Labour Commission appointed the year before by the new Conservative government.

“Hardly, I think,” said Raeburn, “I am particularly anxious not to miss D——­’s evidence.”

And they fell talking a little about the Commission and the witnesses recently examined before it.  Wharton, who was wedged in by a group of ladies, and could not for the moment move, heard most of what they were saying, much against his will.  Moreover Raeburn’s tone of quiet and masterly familiarity with what he and his companion were discussing annoyed him.  There was nothing in the world that he himself would more eagerly have accepted than a seat on that Commission.

“Ah! there is Lady Cradock!” said Raeburn, perceiving his hostess across a sea of intervening faces, and responding to her little wave of the hand.  “I must go and get a few words with her, and then take my aunt away.”

As he made his way towards her, he suddenly brushed against Wharton, who could not escape.  Raeburn looked up, recognised the man he had touched, flushed slightly and passed on.  A bystander would have supposed them strangers to each other.

CHAPTER II.

Two or three minutes later, Wharton was walking down a side street towards Piccadilly.  After all the flattering incidents of the evening, the chance meeting with which it concluded had jarred unpleasantly.  Confound the fellow!  Was he the first man in the world who had been thrown over by a girl because he had been discovered to be a tiresome pedant?  For even supposing Miss Boyce had described that little scene in the library at Mellor to her fiance at the moment of giving him his dismissal—­and the year before, by the help of all the news that reached him about the broken engagement, by the help still