listen to her tongue. Don't you think conviction was easy?"

Lord Windlehurst looked at Hylda approvingly. She has the real gift--
little information, but much knowledge, the primary gift of public life.
Information is full of traps; knowledge avoids them, it reads men; and
politics is men--and foreign affairs, perhaps! She is remarkable. I've
made some hay in the political world, not so much as the babblers think,
but I hadn't her ability at twenty-five."

"Why didn't she see through Eglington?"

"My dear Betty, he didn't give her time. He carried her off her feet.
You know how he can talk."

"That's the trouble. She was clever, and liked a clever man, and he--!"

"Quite so. He'd disprove his own honest parentage, if it would help him
on--as you say."

"I didn't say it. Now don't repeat that as from me. I'm not clever
enough to think of such things. But that Eglington lot--I knew his
father and his grandfather. Old Broadbrim they called his grandfather
after he turned Quaker, and he didn't do that till he had had his fling,
so my father used to say. And Old Broadbrim's father was called I-want-
to-know. He was always poking his nose into things, and playing at being
a chemist-like this one and the one before. They all fly off. This
one's father used to disappear for two or three years at a time. This
one will fly off, too. You'll see!

"He is too keen on Number One for that, I fancy. He calculates like a