Drake retired into himself and replied with some diffidence: 

’Oh, the change is not as great perhaps as you think, I have always looked forward to returning here.  One has ambitions of a kind.’

‘You ought to go into Parliament,’ Clarice said.

Drake laughed, thanking her with the laugh.  ’It’s rather too early to speak of that.’

Mrs. Willoughby observed that he actually blushed.  A blushing filibuster!  There was a contradiction of terms in the phrase, and he undoubtedly blushed.  A question shot through her mind.  Did he blush from modesty, or because Clarice made the suggestion?

Mrs. Willoughby asked Fielding for an answer as he stood by the door of her brougham, before she drove away from Beaufort Gardens.

‘For both reasons, I should say,’ he replied.

’You think, then, he’s attracted?  He hardly showed signs of it, except that once, and modesty alone might account for that.’

Mrs. Willoughby laid some insistence upon the possibility.

‘I should have been inclined to agree with you,’ answered Fielding, ’but Drake dragged me round the square before lunch to question me about Mallinson.’

‘That makes for your view, certainly.  What did you tell him?’

’I painted the portrait which I thought he wanted, picked out Mallinson’s vices in clear colours and added a few which occurred to me at the moment.  However, Drake closed my mouth with—­“He’s a hard worker, though."’

‘I like the man for that!’ cried Mrs. Willoughby, and checked herself suddenly.

‘Yes, he’s honest certainly.’

‘But was he right?’

‘Quite!  Mallinson works very hard; scents danger, I suppose.’

Mrs. Willoughby heaved a sigh of relief.

‘There’s some chance for him, then.  Will he do anything great?’

Fielding laughed.

‘That’s one of the questions Drake put to me!  I think never.’

Mrs. Willoughby accepted the dictum without asking for the reason.  She sat for a moment disconsolately thoughtful.  Then she gave a start.

‘There’s Percy Conway.  I had forgotten him!’

’And wisely, I should think.  He is just making a back for Drake to jump from if he will.’

‘Yes, I noticed that,’ said Mrs. Willoughby, with a sneer at the folly of the creature.  ’He seems to look upon Mallinson and himself as the two figures which tell the weather in a Swiss clock.  When one comes out of his box the other goes in.  I catch your trick, you see,’ and her face relaxed to a smile.

’Only to improve on it in the matter of truth.  For you imply a comparison between Miss Le Mesurier and the weather, and the points of resemblance are strong.’

Mrs. Willoughby’s smile became a laugh.  ’I don’t hold with you about Clarice,’ she said.  ’You don’t know her as I do.  She can take things seriously.’

‘Intensely so—­for five minutes.  I have never denied it.’