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No magnificent painted tiger all polish and stripes could have been more mysterious and sinister to Jean than Reggie rising up before her in his comfortable shooting-clothes after breakfast in his study.

The room they were to work in looked as if nothing but a dog or a pipe had ever entered it. All the walls were covered with pictures of horses, not very good pictures, but obviously very good horses. On each side of the deep stone fireplace sat a golden setter, with watchful amber eyes fixed like flames upon their master. He had told them to keep still and they kept still, but the quality of their stillness was the most intense and active restlessness that Jean had ever encountered. Their eyes shifted to her for a moment as she entered the room, their ears, pricked to the highest point already, moved back to take in the provocation of a new sound. When were they to go out? Their yellow plumed tails moved imperceptibly, keeping even their hopes at bay.

Besides the golden setters, there were guns, enormous leather armchairs, and a desk with accounts in a state of easy-natured confusion.

A magnificent stone Tudor rose carved over the fireplace looked down a little cheerlessly upon the groom's dream of comfort which Reggie had created.

There was no hint in the littered room of the beauty and freshness Jean associated already with everything which Beatrice touched.

Reggie glanced a little ruefully about him before he offered one of the vast leather armchairs to Jean. He himself stood with his back to the fireplace between the golden setters, his monocle fixed firmly upon her, and the 'Times' between his finger and thumb.

For all his air of calm impassiveness he had caught Jean's panic; but he merely became a shade more formidable and desultory to meet it.

He wasn't sorry for Jean; he enjoyed fear, either in women or animals. It gave him the feeling of having something to play with and of slowly paying them out for the power that, in spite of their fears, they had of attracting him.

He hadn't wanted the girl, hanged if he had! Beatrice in her usual high-handed way had foisted her upon him; but since she was here he intended to get some fun out of it.

She was pretty, which was all to the good; but she evidently didn't know what to do with her looks, though Reggie thought she might learn in time.

'I hope,' he said, when he considered that his silence had been alarming enough, 'that you don't mind odds and ends of firearms and this mess I make here? Every dog has to have his own corner to curl up and turn round in, hasn't he? and this happens to be mine. Beatrice loathes it, but she has the rest of the house to fiddle with. Does my pipe worry you?'

Jean said it didn't. She looked steadily out of the latticed window where, between the roses, cobwebs sparkled thick with dew. She hoped that their frail wall of beauty might stand between her and her panic.

Reggie continued to stare at her speculatively through his monocle. You could, he was thinking, make serious love to a woman of your own sort, and you could kiss a pretty housemaid, but what could you do with a girl who sat with a writing-pad in her lap, pointing a fountain pen at you?

She had an enchanting little hand and she could not stop it trembling. Still it was all rather boring; he liked to rush his fences and this was a fence his instinct told him couldn't be rushed. He had been outdoors once before the gong sounded for breakfast, and what he wanted now was to go outdoors again.

He intended to make Jean meet his eyes before he spoke to her, but in spite of her trembling hand she could keep her eyes away from him; and not even the portentous length of his silence shook her into surrender.

'Do you know anything about politics?' he asked her at last, knocking his pipe out on the Tudor rose. 'Because I don't. I'm supposed to be going in for them. Rotten luck I call it, having an election this time of year. Never made a speech in my life. Beatrice had an idea you'd write them for me?' Her eyes withdrew themselves unwillingly from the terrace and rested vaguely on the Tudor rose.

'I suppose,' she enquired cautiously, 'that you're a Conservative?'

This was much the same question to Reggie as if she had asked him if the golden setters were dogs, but about what he felt deeply, he invariably spoke inconclusively, so that he merely refilled his pipe and said, 'Um! I don't know. I don't believe much in the people, do you? though mind you I've nothing against my servants, quite the contrary. I like people to be treated well; but I'm not a Socialist of course. I'm all out for law and order, King and Country and what not! What else can you be? I suppose education's all right and I don't know much about this Safeguarding. You might look up statistics and arguments for me; make 'em as clear and short as you can. I think the Government ought to do something for agriculture, farmers can't sell their produce, freight is too high and foreign competition too strong. I'm all against dumping. My constituency is mostly agricultural--stock-raising and fruit. You might write to some of the farmers and get their figures. Something ought to be done about taxation and rates must be lowered. They're playing the deuce with property in the country, couldn't stay on here myself if my mother hadn't had money. Hang it, I don't know what to call myself--Progressive Conservative is as good a flag as any to fight under. Call me that if you like.'

'Progressive Conservative,' repeated Jean. 'Isn't that rather a contradiction in terms?' Then she remembered that she wasn't there to argue and wrote down hurriedly 'Progressive Conservative.'

'Eh, what?' asked Reggie, taking a step towards her, so that he seemed to tower up above her to the ceiling and to blot out the light. 'Not at all. I've never been against improvements. Wireless, you know, got it in the billiard room now; cars, though they ruin the roads! Can't put the clock back, may as well get the good out of what's there. But I like smartness, like it all the way down, too! All the boys and girls in the place are Scouts--Beatrice runs the girls and I run the boys. Excellent motto, first-rate stuff to teach children--makes 'em useful. I'd like to see every man and woman in this country drilled--that'd knock some of the nonsense out of 'em!'

He moved back to the fireplace again, and Jean trembled afresh. What she minded most about him was his massiveness--not merely his physical massiveness, for though he was tall with broad shoulders there was nothing heavy about him; it was his weight mentally which she felt she couldn't handle. He had all the intractable force of the unimaginative. Nothing could reach him that he did not already know.

'You believe in Force then,' she asked, 'as a cure for Progress?'

'Force naturally,' said Reggie, 'but I don't want to cure Progress. Force helps it along. Look at Mussolini--fine progressive chap Mussolini--he's getting those dirty Italians as hard as nails. Pity we haven't a Mussolini or two in London. What we want is a man with drive to him--get people on the move.'

'But it does matter a little where they're moving to, doesn't it?' Jean interjected.

Reggie waved the need of direction aside with his pipe. 'Get 'em going, and keep 'em going,' he said emphatically. 'Everything in the end comes back to a fight, and what you've got to do is to make everyone fit for it, so that when it comes you're the winner. It's no use flinching from the fact, Miss Arbuthnot, that might is right--always has been, and always will be, and a jolly good thing too! Who'd really want rickets on top?'

Jean considered this point of view with thoughtfulness. 'What,' she asked, after a moment's pause, 'becomes of the idea that we fought the Germans for thinking the same thing?'

'My dear girl,' said Reggie confidentially, 'we didn't! That was all my eye, and--what d'you call this tosh--propaganda? Have to have something to throw at old women while there's a war on! We fought the Germans because we wanted to lick them, and that was the reason why they fought us! I assure you that was all there was to it. Pity we had to have the Americans in; but we needed the money.'

Jean laid down her fountain pen. 'What do you really think about lies?' she demanded. 'You don't use them much in your private life, do you?'

The setters saw the head keeper approaching along the terrace, he was their friend and the sight of him broke down their self-control. They whined pitifully and flew towards the door. Reggie's fellow-feeling overcame his sense of discipline. He opened it for them.

'Morning, Parsons,' he said, 'don't let the dogs frighten the birds. See you later.' Then he turned back to answer this odd girl's question about his private life.

Didn't she know that a gentleman always knew when to lie, and when not? She spoke as if there was an inconsistency in his conduct and as if this was a serious charge to bring against a man, whereas of course ideals were vague and should be kept vague; they didn't have to match. He was not exactly annoyed because she showed pluck and had pretty eyes; but he was damned if he wouldn't make her see sense.

'Well,' he said impressively, 'on general principles I don't lie. But there are cases when a man's got to lie; to help a pal out of a tight corner or to shield a woman.'

'But to save himself bother--not?' Jean insisted.

'No, certainly not,' agreed Reggie. 'A man must stand by his guns.'

'Only a country, to save itself bother, may lie?' Jean asked reflectively. 'Perhaps it would be simpler then to say that a country has no morality. Is that what you teach the Boy Scouts?'

Reggie looked at her sharply. He thought her questions rather rude and distinctly silly; she obviously didn't know the elements of behaviour. Of course he didn't teach the Boy Scouts that England was immoral. But in the background of his mind a reasonable person realizes the moments when a slight evasion has to be made to escape a great inconvenience. A leader is a person who knows when the right moment comes to shift rules, but this is not a fact you should have to explain to those who follow leaders. Apparently this girl had no background to her mind, or else like all women she simply was not reasonable.

'Governments may lie to save themselves trouble,' she repeated with a long indignant breath. 'Well----!'

She had evidently forgotten that she was a private secretary. 'And we're a nation that says it believes in fair play!' she aggravatingly finished.

'Of course we are,' said Reggie, feeling rather red and stiff; a feeling he didn't remember having had since he was a small boy. 'Naturally we do. I don't see why propaganda or the defence of the weak should strike you as unfair.'

'I think a lie a poor shelter for the weakest thing that exists!' exclaimed Jean, 'and to tell a great nation a lie is to treat it like the lowest of savage tribes. Why should any fact have to be misrepresented to a normal mind?'

Reggie looked wistfully out of the window at the two setters bounding away after the keeper in the distance, with ecstatic waggings of their plumed tails, almost embarrassed with the variety of their early morning scents. For the moment he missed them more than they missed him, and this is an undignified attitude for the proud master of devoted dogs.

'Can't get away from facts,' he said firmly. 'Countries are chancey, you have to say what's good for 'em. I don't say you'd need to if you hadn't got democracy. Then you'd simply say what you meant to do, and do it. I agree that's the best way; and the most honest. But since we've got a lot of rabble into our electorate, and can't rule 'em without fooling them, then we've got to fool them! You see, Miss Arbuthnot, we're responsible for the job--and they'd go to pieces as well as we should, if we didn't pull it off.'

Jean saw that his point of view was as fixed as stone; but she saw also, what she had never seen before when she had merely read the specious twaddle she considered his ideas to be, his kindly sense of obligation.

It was the best in Reggie, not the worst, which made him want to delude the people for their good; and it was his benevolence and not his despotism which was really dangerous.

He honestly wanted to do his duty and that was the only way in which he thought duty could be done. 'He doesn't know,' she said to herself, 'that his kindness is just a smoke screen for his greed. He wouldn't like to be greedy in any marked way. So he and his kind have invented duty and kindness--it employs their sense of power without preventing them from having the best of everything. He'd make love to me like that if I'd let him; but since I won't let him, I shall have to face his greed. Lady Falconer has had to face it, but she has fooled him back. I shan't do that. I don't know quite what I shall do, but I shan't yield and I shan't fool him, and if I can help it I won't even run away.'

She raised her eyes to his for the first time; and he let her see the admiration which he knew she felt was an insult.

It was his way of punishing her for having ruffled his sweet temper; but he was a little surprised that she took his stare with composure.

'Wouldn't you like to go out for a walk?' he suggested genially.

'No, but you would,' she said politely, rising from her chair. 'I can write your first speech for you now. I know just what you want, and I'll verify what facts I use; if you will just tell me where you are going to speak first, so that I may study the neighborhood, I shan't have to bother you again.'

'Ashcomb, I believe,' said Reggie, 'next Wednesday, if I don't funk it. It's our nearest town and the market for all the countryside; the audience will be chiefly farmers--my own men most of them. All we've got to do is to cheer them up about rates and taxes. Sure you know what I want?'

'Quite sure,' said Jean, smiling at him for the first time. 'You'll be surprised when you see how well I've grasped your point of view--and of course if you don't like it, you can tear it up!'

He nodded in shamefaced relief. Of course he could tear it up, or Beatrice could. The girl was her fault, and she'd have to do the dirty work if there was any to be done.

He said with empressement that he was sure whatever Jean wrote would be awfully clever and good, and held the door open for her.

She knew how to walk out of a room while she was being looked at. Her thick smooth crop of hair had pretty lights in it.

Reggie really was astonished when he found the speech on his table before he dressed for dinner.

There in clean clear type was the lucid exposition of his views, admirably summed up. An attractive agricultural programme set forth with telling anecdotes and apt illustrations, a shrewd impersonal hit at his opponent, and a really nasty attack on the entire Labour programme. No progressive Tory could fail to feel a thrill of satisfaction as he read how progressive he was and how staunchly he ought to retain all the privileges he intended to retain.

'By Jove, the girl's sound after all!' he exclaimed to Ian, who was smoking a pre-dinner pipe with him after a good day's shooting. 'Thought we'd got a Bolshie in the house--kept me till eleven o'clock this morning--wasted half of my precious morning, arguing about political morality; hope she's not quite as firm about the other kind. She's got a jolly pair of ankles and an instep a kitten could walk under. Did you notice it?'

'Lord, no!' said Ian wearily. 'Haven't looked at the girl.'

'Well, you're so damned unobservant,' said Reggie in an aggrieved voice.

'Not always,' replied Ian under his breath.

Their eyes met suddenly and held each other.

It was a tense look, dispassionate but wary. Each of them knew of what the other was thinking but neither of them was sure what the other meant to do about his thoughts.

Reggie was the first to look away.

'Can't for the life of me imagine,' he muttered, 'what Beatrice wants the girl in the house for, can you? A man could have written my speeches!'

'Any man who comes to this house----' Ian began, and then stopped dead.

'Would fall in love with Beatrice,' Reggie finished for him with savage irony. 'What would that matter? She'd like it, wouldn't she? and one more or less could hardly matter to me!'

'I think,' Ian said quietly, 'she wanted to be quite fair to you about it.'

'Fair!' said Reggie with increasing bitterness. 'Are you as far gone as that? When does a woman ever want to be fair to her husband? If she loves him she fools him, and if she hates him she not only fools him, but she fools the man she's fooling him with!'

'I think you are wrong to suppose that Beatrice is fooling you with any man,' said Ian, controlling his voice with difficulty. 'She can't help being beautiful.'

'She doesn't try to help it very much, does she?' asked Reggie jeeringly. Then suddenly his voice changed and the anger sank out of his eyes. 'My dear old chap,' he said quietly, 'she isn't fooling me with you, and I know it, but only because she can't; and you know that. No one else knows it as well as you do.'

Ian stiffened and said no more. They very seldom spoke of Beatrice, and when they did it was Ian (who was considered to be the clever one) who found the least to say.