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She passed on. The two men strolled away. "Have you any personal feeling against me, Tallente?" Horlock asked. "None whatever," his companion assured him. "You did me the best turn in your life when you left me stranded after Hellesfield." Horlock sighed. "Lethbridge almost insisted, he looked upon you as a firebrand. He said there would be no repose about a Cabinet with you in it."
Tallente lingered on the step. "You will let me know?" she begged. "I will," he promised. "It is probably just a visit of courtesy. Dartrey must feel that he has something to explain about Hellesfield." There was a moment's curious lingering. Each seemed to seek in vain for a last word. They parted with a silent handshake. Tallente looked around at the corner of the avenue.
I am not here to make capital out of a man's disappointment in his friends, but has your great patron used you well? Horlock offers you a grudging and belated place in his Cabinet. What did he say to you when you came hack from Hellesfield?" Tallente was silent. There was, in fact, no answer which he could make. "I do not wish to dwell on that," Dartrey went on.
"Are you Mr. Miller, the Democrat M.P.?" she asked, "the Mr. Miller who was making those speeches at Hellesfield last week?" "At your ladyship's service," he replied, with a low bow. "I am afraid if you are a friend of Mr. Tallente's you must look upon me as a very disagreeable person."
He considered that he had shown remarkable patience with a somewhat troublesome visitor. "Tallente," he said, "it is of no use your being unreasonable. You had your chance at Hellesfield and you lost it; your chance in my Cabinet and lost that too. You know for yourself how many rising politicians I have to satisfy.
The trio Dartrey, with his silence and occasional monosyllabic remarks seemed to draw closer together at every moment until Miller, obviously chafing at his isolation, thrust himself into the conversation. "Mr. Tallente," he said, taking advantage of a moment's pause to direct the conversation into a different channel, "we kept our word at Hellesfield." "You did," his host acknowledged drily.
"I think yours is really the common-sense view of the matter. Only," he went on, "I have always represented, amongst the coalitionists, the moderate Socialist, the views of those men who recognise the power and force of the coming democracy, and desire to have legislation attuned to it. Yet it was the Democratic vote which upset me at Hellesfield."
Yet these fellows down at Hellesfield preferred to support Bloxham, who twenty years ago would have been called a Tory." "I can quite understand your being puzzled at that," Tallente acknowledged. "I was myself at first. Since then I have received an explanation." "Well, well," Mr. Horlock interjected, with a return of his official genial manner, "we'll let sleeping dogs lie.
"If you read the newspapers," he remarked, a little grimly, "you might not be so sure that the country is clamouring for my services." She waved away his speech with a little gesture of contempt. "Rubbish! Your defeat at Hellesfield was a matter of political jobbery. Any one could see through that. Horlock ought never to have sent you there.
He seldom makes advances and has few friends. He is, I believe, a man with the highest sense of honour. Perhaps he has come to explain to me why they threw me out at Hellesfield." "In any case," she said, as they stood for a moment on the step, "I feel that something exciting is going to happen." Miller, carrying his tweed cap in his hand, insisted upon a farewell.
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