Palace Yard, save for a statuesque policeman, was empty. CHAPTER IX!

“Oh, you know,” explained Flossie. “Like a volcano compressed into a steam engine.” “No,” Joan answered. “I was too late. She had died the night before. I hardly recognized her when I saw her. She looked so sweet and young.”

“Why is the Press always so eager for war?” mused Joan. “According to their own account, war doesn’t pay them.” He turned his head towards her with an amused raising of the eyebrows. “Carleton owns two London dailies,” he answered, “and is in treaty for a third: together with a dozen others scattered about the provinces. Most politicians find themselves, sooner or later, convinced by his arguments. Phillips may prove the exception.” Oh, the things she was going to get fond of! The things that her poor, round foolish eyes gloated upon the moment that she saw them! Joan tried to enlist the shopman on her side, descending even to flirtation. Unfortunately he was a young man with a high sense of duty, convinced that his employer’s interests lay in his support of Mrs. Phillips. The sight of the furniture that, between them, they selected for the dining-room gave Joan a quite distinct internal pain. They ascended to the floor above, devoted to the exhibition of “Recherché drawing-room suites.” Mrs. Phillips’s eye instinctively fastened with passionate desire upon the most atrocious. Joan grew vehement. It was impossible.