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At eight o'clock the next evening, John Endor found himself in the prime minister's drawing-*room, shaking hands with the prime minister's lady.

The celebrated "Mrs. Wilber" was a tall, rather austere dame, with the remains of considerable good looks; moreover, they conferred upon her an air of intellectual distinction to which she was hardly entitled. Mrs. Wilber, it is true, had an almost sublime power of putting her foot in it; but this faculty in a prime minister's lady may spring from one of two causes: she may have too many brains, or she may have too few. Slippery Sam's greatest enemies had never accused his wife of having too many.

By no means brilliant herself, Mrs. Wilber profoundly distrusted scintillation in others. Her husband she regarded as good rather than brilliant; indeed, in her attitude to her lord, she was almost a latter-*day equivalent of Mrs. Gladstone. She seemed to regard the prime minister as too bright and good for human nature's daily food; in fact, a kind of composite of the librarian to the House of Lords and a certain