She smiled at him delightfully.

"I refuse to be depressed even by your solemn looks," she declared. "It is my twenty-fourth birthday to-day and I am still young enough to cling to my optimism."

"Your birthday," he remarked. "I should have brought you an offering."

She held up the roses.

"Nothing in the world," she a.s.sured him softly, "could have given me more pleasure than these. Now I am going to take you first into a little den where you will not be disturbed, and then fetch my uncle,"

she added, as they pa.s.sed into the house. "I shall pray for your mutual conversion. You won't mind a very feminine room, will you? Just now there are certain to be callers at any moment, and my uncle's rooms are liable to all manner of intrusions."

She threw open the door and ushered him into what seemed indeed to be a little fairy chamber, a chamber with yellow walls and yellow rug, white furniture, oddments of china and photographs, silver-grey etchings, water-colour landscapes, piles of books and magazines. On a small table stood a yellow Sevres vase, full of roses.

"It's a horrible place for a man to sit in," she said, looking around her. "You must take that wicker chair and throw away as many cushions as you like. Now I am going to fetch my uncle, and remember, please,"

she concluded, looking back at him from the door, "if I have seemed frivolous this morning, I am not always so. More than anything I am looking forward, down at Lyndwood, to have you, if you will, talk to me seriously."

"Shall I dare to argue with you, I wonder?" he asked.

She smiled at him.

"Why not? A matter of courage?"

"The bravest person in the world," he declared, "remembers always that little proverb about discretion."

CHAPTER VIII

The conference between Mr. Foley and Maraton was brief enough. The former arrived a few moments after his niece's departure.

"I have come," Maraton announced, as they shook hands, "to accept your invitation to Lyndwood. You understand, I am sure, that that commits me to nothing?"

Mr. Foley's expression was one of intense relief.

"Naturally," he replied. "I quite understand that. I am delighted to think that you are coming at all. May I ask whether you have conferred with your friends about the matter?"

Maraton shook his head.

"I have not even mentioned it to them. I met what I understand to be a committee of the Labour Party this morning--a Mr. Dale, Abraham Weavel, Culvain, Samuel Borden and David Ross. Those were the names so far as I can remember. I did not mention my proposed visit to you at all. There seemed to me to be no necessity. I am subject to no one here."

Mr. Foley smiled.

"They won't like it," he declared frankly.

"Their liking or disliking it will not affect the situation in the least," Maraton a.s.sured him. "I shall come, without a doubt. It will interest me to hear what you have to say, although unfortunately I cannot hold out the slightest hope--"

"That is entirely understood," Mr. Foley interrupted. "Now how will you come? Lyndwood Park is just sixty miles from London. To-day is Friday, isn't it? I shall motor down there sometime to-morrow. Why won't you come down with me?"

Maraton shook his head.

"If you will excuse me," he said, "I will not fix any time definitely.

I have a good deal of correspondence still to attend to, and there is one little matter which might keep me in town till the afternoon."

"Let me send a car up for you," Mr. Foley suggested.

"Thank you," Maraton replied, "I have already hired one for a time."

"Then come just at what time suits you," Mr. Foley begged,--"the sooner the better, of course. Apart from that, I shall be about the place all day."

In Buckingham Gate, Maraton came slowly to a standstill. The coach which he had seen in the Park an hour ago was drawn up in front of a large hotel. The young man who was driving it had just come down the steps and was drawing on his gloves. They met almost face to face.

"Am I to speak to you?" the young man asked.

"You had better," Maraton a.s.sented. "Tell me what you are doing here?"

"I was bored with Paris," the young man answered. "My friends were all coming here. I had no idea that we were likely to meet."

Maraton looked at him thoughtfully. As they stood face to face at that moment, there was a certain strange likeness between them, a likeness of the husk only.

"I do not wish to interfere with your movements," Maraton said calmly.

"Where you are is nothing to me. I proposed that you should remain away from London simply because I fancied that it would be easier for you to observe the conditions which exist between us. So long as you remember them, however, your whereabouts are indifferent to me."

The young man laughed a little nervously.

"You're not over-cordial!"

Maraton shrugged his shoulders.

"The world in which you live," he remarked, "is a training school, I suppose, for false sentiment. The slight kinship that there is between us is of no account to me. I simply remind you once more that it is to your advantage to neither know me or to know of me. Remember that, and it may be London or Paris or New York--wherever you choose."

The young man remounted his coach, and Maraton pa.s.sed on. He walked without a pause to the square in which his house was situated. Here he found Aaron hard at work and, sitting down at once, he began to sign his letters.

"No end of people have been here," Aaron announced. "I have got rid of them all."

"Good!" Maraton said shortly. "By-the-bye, Aaron, isn't there a meeting to-night at the Clarion?"

Aaron nodded.

"David Ross is going to speak. He can move them when he starts. My sister is going to call here for me, and I thought if you didn't want me, I'd like to go."

"We will all go together," Maraton decided. "We can creep in somewhere at the back, I suppose. I want to hear how they do it."

The young man's face lit up with joy.

"There's sure to be lots of people there," he declared, "but we can find a seat at the back quite easily."

"What's it all about?" Maraton asked.

"The proposed boiler-maker's strike," Aaron replied eagerly. "The meeting is really a meeting of the workpeople at Boulding's. But are you sure you won't go on the platform, sir?"