A Servant of the Public. Anthony Hope

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      Ashley had made much the same remark in different words to Irene Kilnorton a few weeks before; but remarks do not bear transplanting.

      "Isn't that rather a traditional view?" he asked.

      "You mean a prejudiced one?"

      "Well, yes."

      "I suppose so. But prejudices start somehow, don't they?" Her smile was very gentle, but still, to his mind, horribly aloof and judicial. Could she not understand how a woman might be carried away, and blunder into a Mr. Fenning, per incuriam and all in a minute (so to speak)? In such a case was it to be expected that the Mr. Fenning in question should be all in all to her? In some ways perhaps she must acknowledge his existence; but at any rate she needn't Darby-and-Joan it with him!

      "Poor dear Ora!" said Irene Kilnorton after a pause. Yet she was not naturally malicious any more than Ashley Mead was naturally selfish. If we are responsible for the moods we raise in others Miss Pinsent's account was mounting up. Ashley allowed himself the retort of a laugh as Lady Muddock rose from the table.

      "I came to talk to you," he said to Alice, as she passed him.

      "Then drink your coffee quick, and come into the garden," she answered with her usual frank kindness. When she looked at him her aspect and air became less judicial.

      In the garden he opened the subject of Sir James' proposal; his eyes were set straight in front of him, hers on the ground. Her answer would have dismayed Sir James, and it surprised Ashley. She was energetically, almost passionately, opposed to his entering the business.

      "It's not your line, or your taste, or your proper work," she said. "What's the good of being rich if you're doing what you hate all the time?"

      "I felt just like that," he said gratefully, "but I was afraid that I felt like it because I was a fool."

      "You can make your own way. Don't sell yourself to the business."

      He glanced at her stealthily; her colour had risen and her lip trembled. Did she think of anything besides the business when she bade him not sell himself? A moment later she laughed uneasily, as, with a reference to the conversation at lunch, she said,

      "You've too much of the artistic temperament for Buckingham Palace Road."

      "I? I the artistic temperament?" He accepted the trite phrase as a useful enough symbol of what they both meant.

      "Yes," she answered steadily. "A good deal of it."

      "Then I come under Irene Kilnorton's censures?"

      "Under a good many of them, yes."

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