‘What about Conway?’ asked Drake.

’He still walks up and down London.  I fancy he is secretary to something.’

Drake hesitated for a second.  ‘Does he go there very much?’

‘A good deal, I fancy,’ she replied.  ’But you mustn’t think the disagreement is really serious.  There is no cause outside themselves.  Have you called?’

‘No; I go down to Bentbridge to-morrow.  I must call when I get back.’

‘Then you are going to stand for Parliament?’ she exclaimed.  ’I am so glad.’

’Yes; they expect an election in July, I believe.  You see, now that Fielding has been made a director and has settled down to work, I have got more time.  In fact, one feels rather lonely at nights.’

Mrs. Willoughby was willing to hear more concerning Fielding’s merits.  She promptly set herself to belittle the importance of his position and work for the sake of hearing them upheld, and she was not disappointed.

‘It’s easy enough to laugh at finance, and fashionable into the bargain,’ he said.  ’But here’s the truth of the matter.  Money does to-day what was the work of the sword a century or so ago, and, as far as I can see, does it better.  To my thinking, it should be held in quite as high esteem.  You can put it aside and let it rust if you like, but other nations won’t follow your good example.  Then the time comes when you must use it, and you find the only men you’ve got to handle it are the men you can’t trust—­the bandit instead of the trained soldier.  No!  Put the best men you can find to finance, I say,’ and with that he said good-bye.

‘Why doesn’t he drop them altogether?’ asked Fielding with considerable irritation when Mrs. Willoughby informed him of Drake’s intention to renew his acquaintance with the Mallinsons.

‘It would only make matters worse if he did,’ replied she.  ’Clarice would be certain to count any falling off of her friends as a new grievance against her husband.’

‘Friends?’

‘He is willing to take his place as one.’

’He will find it singularly uninteresting.  Friendship between a man and a woman!’

He shrugged his shoulders; then he laughed to himself.  Mrs. Willoughby got up nervously from her chair and walked to the opposite end of the room.

‘These things,’ continued Fielding in a perfectly complacent and unconscious tone, ‘are best understood by their symbols.’

Mrs. Willoughby swung round.  ‘Symbols?’ she asked curiously.

Fielding took a seat and leaned back comfortably.  ’The feelings and emotions,’ he began, ’have symbols in the visible world.  Of these symbols the greater number are flowers.  I won’t trouble you with an enumeration of them, for in the first place I couldn’t give it, and in the second, Shakespeare has provided a fairly comprehensive list.  And by nature I am averse to challenging comparisons.  There are, however, feelings of which the symbols are not flowers, and amongst them we must reckon friendship between man and woman.  Passion, we know, has its passion flower, but the friendship I am speaking of has its symbol too’—­he paused impressively—­’and that symbol is cold boiled mutton.’