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80 a sob in her voice. "You are quite right. I am not myself. I don't know what is the matter with me. I did not sleep very well last night."

"You did not sleep! I Did anyone—were you frightened at the noises in the hotel?"

"No." She hesitated.

"But there were noises," he said. "I heard the tramping of horses' feet in the yard. I wondered who could have come so late."

"It was nothing," she said, hurriedly. "No, I was not disturbed. Don't think anything more about my looks, Frank, or about things. It doesn't matter after all, since you are sure to be member for Wallaroo."

At that moment Lord Horace's voice sounded in the passage. He ushered in the victorious Blake, pausing as he did so to give some directions to the waiter. "Heidseck—spurious, of course, Blake, but not half bad. Hallett, old boy, swallow down animosities; drown 'em in the flowing bowl, and Elsie and Ina must join in. The fight was a fair one, and we're beaten. There's Wallaroo ahead, a dead certainity if ever there was one."

Hallett came forward, and held out his hand to his rival. "You are right, Horace, and I congratulate you, Mr. Blake."

Elsie admired him at the moment very much, but she admired Blake still more, as, with winning courtesy, he responded to Hallett's congratulations.

"If there had been twenty fewer Irishmen in Groondi, you, not I, would have been member for Luya," he said. "But, as Lord Horace says, there's Wallaroo ahead, and we shall fight in the Legislative Assembly yet, Mr. Hallett, in as friendly a fashion, I hope, as we have fought here."