forgiven Comus generously for misdeeds of some gravity committed in 
another continent, but she could never overlook the fact that out 
of a dish of five plovers' eggs he was certain to take three.  The 
absent may be always wrong, but they are seldom in a position to be 
inconsiderate.

Thus a wall of ice had grown up gradually between mother and son, a 
barrier across which they could hold converse, but which gave a 
wintry chill even to the sparkle of their lightest words.  The boy 
had the gift of being irresistibly amusing when he chose to exert 
himself in that direction, and after a long series of moody or 
jangling meal-sittings he would break forth into a torrential flow 
of small talk, scandal and malicious anecdote, true or more 
generally invented, to which Francesca listened with a relish and 
appreciation, that was all the more flattering from being so 
unwillingly bestowed.

"If you chose your friends from a rather more reputable set you 
would be doubtless less amusing, but there would be compensating 
advantages."

Francesca snapped the remark out at lunch one day when she had been 
betrayed into a broader smile than she considered the circumstances 
of her attitude towards Comus warranted.

"I'm going to move in quite decent society to-night," replied Comus 
with a pleased chuckle; "I'm going to meet you and Uncle Henry and 
heaps of nice dull God-fearing people at dinner."

Francesca gave a little gasp of surprise and annoyance.

"You don't mean to say Caroline has asked you to dinner to-night?" 
she said; "and of course without telling me.  How exceedingly like 
her!"

Lady Caroline Benaresq had reached that age when you can say and do 
what you like in defiance of people's most sensitive feelings and 
most cherished antipathies.  Not that she had waited to attain her 
present age before pursuing that line of conduct; she came of a 
family whose individual members went through life, from the nursery 
to the grave, with as much tact and consideration as a cactus-hedge 
might show in going through a crowded bathing tent.  It was a 
compensating mercy that they disagreed rather more among themselves 
than they did with the outside world; every known variety and shade 
of religion and politics had been pressed into the family service 
to avoid the possibility of any agreement on the larger essentials 
of life, and such unlooked-for happenings as the Home Rule schism, 
the Tariff-Reform upheaval and the Suffragette crusade were 
thankfully seized on as furnishing occasion for further differences 
and sub-divisions.  Lady Caroline's favourite scheme of 
entertaining was to bring jarring and antagonistic elements into 
close contact and play them remorselessly one against the other.  
"One gets much better results under those circumstances" she used 
to observe, "than by asking people who wish to meet each other.  
Few people talk as brilliantly to impress a friend as they do to 
depress an enemy."

She admitted that her theory broke down rather badly if you applied 
it to Parliamentary debates.  At her own dinner table its success 
was usually triumphantly vindicated.

"Who else is to be there?" Francesca asked, with some pardonable 
misgiving.

"Courtenay Youghal.  He'll probably sit next to you, so you'd 
better think out a lot of annihilating remarks in readiness.  And 
Elaine de Frey."

"I don't think I've heard of her.  Who is she?"

"Nobody in particular, but rather nice-looking in a solemn sort of 
way, and almost indecently rich."

"Marry her" was the advice which sprang to Francesca's lips, but 
she choked it back with a salted almond, having a rare perception 
of the fact that words are sometimes given to us to defeat our 
purposes.

"Caroline has probably marked her down for Toby or one of the 
grand-nephews," she said, carelessly; "a little money would be 
rather useful in that quarter, I imagine."

Comus tucked in his underlip with just the shade of pugnacity that 
she wanted to see.

An advantageous marriage was so obviously the most sensible course 
for him to embark on that she scarcely dared to hope that he would 
seriously entertain it; yet there was just a chance that if he got 
as far as the flirtation stage with an attractive (and attracted) 
girl who was also an heiress, the sheer perversity of his nature 
might carry him on to more definite courtship, if only from the 
desire to thrust other more genuinely enamoured suitors into the 
background.  It was a forlorn hope; so forlorn that the idea even 
crossed her mind of throwing herself on the mercy of her BETE 
NOIRE, Courtenay Youghal, and trying to enlist the influence which 
he seemed to possess over Comus for the purpose of furthering her 
hurriedly conceived project.  Anyhow, the dinner promised to be 
more interesting than she had originally anticipated.

Lady Caroline was a professed Socialist in politics, chiefly, it