Page:The council of seven.djvu/288



Helen, meanwhile, was spending the week-end at Cloudesley. And here, too, in the famous Midland home of a great political magnate, certain strange things happened.

To begin with, Mrs. John Endor had to make the best excuses she could for the non-arrival of her distinguished husband. He had "chucked" at the last moment, and it was not easy to forget that fact. The party was large and made up of heterogeneous elements. But more than one of its members had looked forward to spending a certain amount of time in the interesting company of the new Home Secretary. Keen disappointment was expressed by host, hostess and guests alike. Helen's excuses for the absentee sounded in her own ears rather hollow, but she had tact enough to make them sound convincing in the ear of others.

All the same, her brief Saturday afternoon to Monday morning sojourn in a huge barracks of a house was to prove a particularly trying ordeal. Not that there was any lack of creature comforts. But the or