After a short pause, filled by the arrangement of papers, Quisante observed, "That must have cost money. He'd saved out of what he got for the game, eh?"

"It was supposed Sir Winterton found the money," said Foster, "but nothing was known. Sir Winterton refused to make any statement. He said his friends would know what to think, and he didn't care a damn (that was his word) about anybody else. Still some weren't satisfied. But the talk died away, except here and there among the men who'd been Tom's pals. I daresay Tom gave 'em a rabbit now and again in exchange for a pot of beer, and they missed him." Mr. Foster ended with a little chuckle.

"I think Sir Winterton might have been a little more explicit," Quisante remarked. "There's some excuse for thinking an explanation not unnecessary. What became of the girl? Did she go to Manitoba?"

"I believe she did in the end, but she'd married a man from Dunn's works and left the town three months after her father was sent to prison."

Quisante came back to the hearth and stood looking down on old Foster.

"Rather a queer story," he said. "But I meant, was there anything against him of a public nature, in his local record, anything of that sort, you know."

"I know nothing of that kind," said Foster, raising his eyes and meeting his leader's. He looked rather puzzled, as if he were still not quite sure what Quisante's question had meant, in spite of Quisante's explanation of it. "I'd almost forgotten this, but Japhet Williams mentioned it the other day. You know Japhet by now. He said he thought he ought to ask Sir Winterton to make a statement."

A sudden gleam shot through Quisante's eyes.

"Mr. Williams' active conscience at work again?" he asked with a sneering laugh.

"That's it," said Foster, still looking stolidly at his chief. "But I know Sir Winterton; he'd only say what he did before."

Quisante turned, flung the end of his cigar into the grate, and turned back to Foster, saying,

"Mr. Williams must do as he thinks right; but of course I can't have any hand in a matter of that kind."

"Just so, just so," murmured Foster as hurriedly but even more vaguely than usual. His chief was puzzling him still.

"I can't have anything at all to do with it," Quisante repeated emphatically. Foster did not quite know whence he gathered the impression, but he was left with the feeling that, if he should chance ever to be asked what had passed between them on the subject, he must remember this sentence at least, whatever else of the conversation he recollected or forgot.

"Of course you can't, sir. I only mentioned it in passing," said he.

"And you'd better tell Japhet Williams so, if he mentions the matter." The slightest pause followed. "Or," added Quisante, grinding his heel into the hearth rug as though in absence of mind, "if it happens to crop up in talk between you."

Whether the matter did crop up as suggested or not is one of those points of secret history which it seems useless to try to discover. But an incident which occurred the next evening showed that Japhet Williams' mind and conscience had, either of their own motion or under some outside direction, been concerning themselves with the question of Tom Sinnett and his daughter Susy. There was a full and enthusiastic meeting of Sir Winterton's supporters. In spite of Quisante's victory over No. 77, they were in good heart and fine fighting fettle; Sir Winterton was good-tempered and sanguine; there was enough opposition to give the affair go, not enough to make itself troublesome. But at the end, after a few of the usual questions and the usual verbal triumphs of the candidate, a small man rose from the middle of the hall. He was greeted by hoots, with a few cheers mingling. The Chairman begged silence for their worthy fellow-townsman, Councillor Japhet Williams.

Japhet was perfectly self-possessed; he had been, he said, as a rule a supporter of the opposite party, but he kept his mind open and was free to admit that he had been considerably impressed by some of the arguments which had fallen from Sir Winterton Mildmay that evening. The meeting applauded, and Sir Winterton nodded and smiled. There was one matter, however, which he felt it his duty to mention. Now that Sir Winterton Mildmay (the full name came with punctilious courtesy every time) was appealing to a wider circle than that of his personal friends and acquaintances, now that he—was seeking the confidence of his fellow-townsmen in general (A voice "He's got it too," and cheers), would Sir Winterton Mildmay consider the desirability of reconsidering the attitude he had taken up some time ago, and consider the desirability (Japhet's speech was not very artistically phrased but he loved the long words) of making a fuller public statement with reference to what he (Mr. Japhet Williams) would term the Sinnett affair? And with this Japhet sat down, having caused what the reporters very properly described as a "Sensation"—and an infinite deal of hooting and groaning to boot. But there were cheers also from the back of the room, where a body of roughly dressed sturdy fellows sat sucking at black clay pipes; these were men from the various works, from Dunn's and from Japhet's own.

As Japhet proceeded Sir Winterton's handsome face had grown ruddier and ruddier; when Japhet finished, he sat still through the hubbub, but his hand twitched and he clutched the elbow of his chair tightly. The platform collectively looked uncomfortable. The chairman—he was Green, the linen-draper in High Street—glanced uneasily at Sir Winterton and then whispered in his ear. Sir Winterton threw a short remark at him, the chairman shrank back with the appearance of having been snubbed. Sir Winterton rose slowly to his feet, still very red in the face, still controlling himself to a calmness of gesture and voice. But all he said in answer to that most respected and influential townsman Mr. Japhet Williams was,

"No, I won't."

And down he plumped into his chair again.

Not a word of courtesy, not a word of respect for Japhet's motives, not even an appeal for trust, not even a simple pledge of his word! A curt and contemptuous "No, I won't," was all that Sir Winterton's feelings, or Sir Winterton's sensitiveness, or his temper, or his obstinacy, allowed him to utter. Sir Winterton was a great man, no doubt, but at election times the People also enjoys a transient sense of greatness and of power. The cheers were less hearty now, the groans more numerous; the audience felt that, in its own person and in the person of Japhet Williams, it was being treated with disrespect; already one or two asked, "If he's got a fair and square answer, why don't he give it?" The superfine sense of honour, which feels itself wounded by being asked for a denial and soiled by condescending to give one, is of a texture too delicate for common appreciation. "No, I won't," said Sir Winterton, red in the face, and the meeting felt snubbed. Why did he snub them? The meeting began to feel suspicious. There were no more questions; the proceedings were hurried through; Sir Winterton drove off, pompous in his anger, red from his hurt feelings, stiff in his obstinacy. The cheer that followed him had not its former heartiness.

"I only did my duty," said Japhet to a group who surrounded him.

"That's right, Mr. Williams," he was answered. "We know you. Don't you let yourself be silenced, sir." For everybody now remembered the Sinnett affair, which had seemed so forgotten, everybody had a detail to tell concerning it, his own views to set forth, or those of some shrewd friend to repeat. That night the taverns in the town were full of it, and at many a supper table the story was told over again. As for Japhet, he dropped in at Mr. Foster's and told what he had done, complaining bitterly of how Sir Winterton had treated him, declaring that he had been prepared to listen to any explanation, almost to take Sir Winterton's simple word, but that he was not to be bullied in a matter in which his own conscience and the rights of the constituency were plainly and deeply involved. Mr. Foster said as little as he could.

"It won't do for me to take any part," he remarked. "I'm too closely connected with Mr. Quisante, and I know he wouldn't wish to enter into such a matter."

"I'm not acting as a party man," said Japhet Williams, "and this isn't a party matter. But a plain answer to a plain question isn't much to ask, and I mean to ask for it till I get it, or know the reason why I can't."

Dim rumours of a "row" at Sir Winterton's meeting reached the Bull that night, brought by Jimmy Benyon, who had been at a minor meeting across the railway bridge among the railway men. Somebody had brought up an old scandal, and the candidate's answer had not given satisfaction. The ladies showed no curiosity; Quisante, very tired, lay on the sofa doing nothing, neither reading, nor talking, nor sleeping. His eyes were fixed on the ceiling, he seemed hardly to hear what Jimmy said, and he also asked no questions. So Jimmy, dismissing the matter from his mind, went to bed, leaving Quisante still lying there, with wide-open eyes.

There he lay a long while alone; once or twice he frowned, once or twice he smiled. Was he thinking over the opportunity that offered, and the instrument that presented itself? What chances might lie in Sir Winterton's dogged honour and tender sensitiveness on the one hand, and on the other in that conscience of little Japhet's, stronger now in its alliance with hurt pride and outraged self-importance! And nobody could say that Quisante himself had had any part in it; he had spoken to nobody except Foster, and he had told Foster most plainly that he would have nothing to do with such a matter. There he lay, making his case, the case he could tell to all the world, the case Foster also could tell, the case that both Foster and he could and would tell, if need be, to all the world, to all the world—and to May Quisante.

"Sandro always has a case," said Aunt Maria. He had a case about what Japhet termed the Sinnett affair, just as he had had a case, and a very strong one as it had proved, about placard No. 77. When at last he dragged his weary overdone body to bed, his lips were set tight and his eyes were eager. It was the look that meant something in his mind, good or bad, but anyhow a resolution, and the prospect of work to be done. Had May seen him then, she would have known the look, and hoped and feared. But she was sleeping, and none asked Quisante what was in his mind that night.



CHAPTER XII.

A HIGHLY CORRECT ATTITUDE.

Up to the present time all had gone most smoothly at Moors End, the Mildmays' old manor-house, eight miles from Henstead, and Lady Mildmay had confided many quiet self-congratulations to Mrs. Baxter's ear. For it had seemed possible that the election might prove a cause of perturbation. Lady Mildmay was still in love with her handsome well-preserved husband, and had every confidence in him, but to a chosen friend she would sometimes admit that he was "difficult"; she called him not proud and obstinate, but sensitive and a little touchy; she hinted that he could not bear unpleasant looks, and yet was not very ready to make concessions to friendship. No doubt he needed some management, and Lady Mildmay, like many wives, found one of her chief functions to consist in acting as a buffer between her husband and a world which did not always approach him with enough gentleness and consideration. Hence her joy at the prosperous passage of a critical time, at the enthusiasm of their supporters, and at the gratification and urbanity of Sir Winterton. Satisfaction begat charity, and Lady Mildmay had laughingly dismissed some portentous hints which Mrs. Baxter let fall about the certain character and the probable tactics of Mr. Quisante.

"His wife looks so nice, he can't be very bad," said kind Lady Mildmay, using an argument of most uncritical charity.

Although the Dean, if pressed, must have ranked himself among his host's political opponents, he was so little of a party man and had so many points of sympathy with Sir Winterton (especially on Church matters) that he very contentedly witnessed the contest from Moors End and no longer troubled himself to conceal his hopes of a Moors End triumph. Nevertheless he was judiciously reticent about Quisante, generously eulogistic of May. Sir Winterton looked forward to making the acquaintance of both, but thought that the occasion had better be postponed till they had ceased to be opponents.

"But I hope you and your wife'll go over as often as you like," he said to the Dean very cordially. But the Dean and Mrs. Baxter did not go, perhaps preferring not to divide their sympathies, perhaps fearing that they might seem like spies and be suspected of carrying back information to the rival camp. "I dare say you're wise," said Sir Winterton, rather relieved; he had made the suggestion because it was the handsome thing to do, but was not eager that it should be accepted. To do the handsome thing and to meet with pleasant looks were the two requisites most essential to Sir Winterton's happiness; given these he was at his best and his best was a fine specimen of the class to which he belonged. There was, however, a weak side to these two desires of his, as the history of the Sinnett affair to some extent indicated.

The first shock to Sir Winterton's good temper had been the matter of No. 77; until then he had been lavish of the usual polite compliments to his opponent's personal character. After No 77's prodigal reappearance and Quisante's rhetorical effort in defence of it these assurances were no more on his lips, and for a time he bore himself with strict reserve when Quisante was mentioned. He had been right in the dispute, and he had been beaten; silence was the utmost that could be expected of his tolerance or his self-control; his refusal to speak on the subject showed his opinion well enough, and he must not be blamed too severely if he listened without protest and perhaps with pleasure to Mrs. Baxter's pungent criticisms. Of course she had been reminded of something—of the strictures which a certain Provincial Editor had passed on the household arrangements of a certain Minor Canon; a libel action had ensued, and the jury had been beguiled into finding for the defendant on a bare literal construction of words which to anybody acquainted with local circumstances bore another and much blacker meaning. This Mrs. Baxter called a pettifogging trick, and she pursued her parallel till the same terms were obviously indicated as appropriate to Quisante's conduct.

"My dear!" said the Dean in mild protest; but Sir Winterton laughed as though he had enjoyed the story. He was at once favoured with the further parallel of the Girdlestones' coachman and, as the conversation drifted to May, of the Nonconformist Minister's daughter and the Circus Proprietor. All Mrs. Baxter's armoury of reminiscence was heartily at his service.

But No. 77 did not after all touch Sir Winterton very closely. His temper had begun to recover and he had nearly forgiven Quisante when suddenly Japhet Williams produced a far more severe and deadly shock. His action was a bomb, and a bomb thrown from a hand which Moors End had been fain to think was or might be friendly. Was not Japhet a neighbour, only two miles off along the Henstead Road, and did not Lady Mildmay and Mrs. Williams, religious differences notwithstanding, work together every year on the Committee of the Cottage Gardens and Window-Boxes Show? Had not Japhet himself been understood to be reconsidering his political opinions? There was even more. The Sinnett affair was the one subject utterly forbidden, most rigidly tabooed, at Moors End. All Sir Winterton's relatives, friends, acquaintances, and dependents knew that well. Sir Winterton's honour and temper had never been so wounded as over that affair. By Japhet's hand it was dragged into light again; the odious thing became once more the gossip of Henstead, once more a disgusting topic which it was impossible wholly to ignore at Moors End. This was plain enough since, on the morning after Japhet's question had been put, Lady Mildmay was discussing the position with Mrs. Baxter in the morning-room, while the Dean and Sir Winterton walked round and round the lawn in gloomy conversation punctuated by gloomier silences.

What the actual history was Lady Mildmay's narrative showed pretty accurately. Sir Winterton's predominant desires, to do the handsome thing and to meet with pleasant looks, evidently had played a large part. Lady Mildmay blushed a little and smiled as she began by observing that Sir Winterton had distinguished the girl by some kind notice; he liked her, he always liked nice-spoken nice-looking girls; for her sake and her mother's (a very decent woman), he had forgiven Tom many irregularities. At last his patience gave out and Tom was prosecuted; when arrested, Tom had tried blackmail; Sir Winterton was not to be bullied, and Tom's speech from the dock was no more than an outburst of defeated malice.

Then came on the scene Sir Winterton's kind heart and his predominant desires. He had made the girl a present to facilitate her marriage and had got the husband work away from the town, where no gossip would have reached. This seemed enough, and so Doctor Tillman, an old and wise friend, urged. But as the time of Tom's release approached and his wife made preparations for receiving him in a cottage just on the edge of Sir Winterton's estate, it became odious to think of the black looks and scowls which would embitter every ride in that direction. "I want to forget the whole thing, to get rid of it, to blot it all out," said Sir Winterton fretfully. Prison had induced reason in Tom Sinnett; he made his submission and accepted the liberal help which carried him and his wife, his daughter and her husband, to a new life across the seas. Then Sir Winterton had peace in his heart and abroad; he had behaved most handsomely, and there were no scowling faces to remind him of the hateful episode. He had met the gossip boldly and defiantly; it had died away and had seemed utterly forgotten and extinct; the low grumbles and not very seemly jokes which still lingered among the men at the various works in Henstead, where Tom had been a persona grata, never reached the ears of the great folk at Moors End; it is perhaps only at election times that such things become audible in such quarters.

The poor lady ended with a careworn smile; she had suffered much during the episode, and perhaps the more because her faith in her husband had never wavered.

"I did so hope it was all over," she said.

"That's a good deal to hope about anything," observed Mrs. Baxter rather grimly.

"It does annoy Winterton so terribly. I'm afraid it'll quite upset him."

Mrs. Baxter had her own opinion about Sir Winterton; amid much that was favourable, she had no doubt that he was far too ready to get on the high horse.

"Well, my dear," she said, "Sir Winterton'll have to do what many people have; he must swallow his pride and tell the truth about it."

"I don't think he will," sighed Lady Mildmay, looking out at her husband's tall imposing figure, and marking the angry energy with which he was impressing his views on the Dean.

In this case at least Mrs. Baxter was right. Sir Winterton had got on the very highest of horses; he had mounted at the meeting, flinging back his "No, I won't," as he sprang to the saddle; he was firmly seated; having got up, he declared that he could not think of coming down. There, for good or evil, he sat. The Dean looked vexed and puzzled.

"This Mr. Williams is an honest man, I suppose?" he asked.

"Oh, honest as the day, too honest. But he's an infernal little ass," said Sir Winterton. "Somebody's got hold of him and is using him, or he's heard some gossip and caught it up. I won't say a word." And he went on to ask if he were to degrade himself by making explanations and excuses for his personal conduct to all the rowdies and loafers of Henstead. "If I have to do that to get in, why, I'll stay out, and be hanged to them." His face suggested that his language would have been still more vigorous but for a respect due to the Dean's cloth.

Later in the day they all had a turn at him, his wife pleading tenderly, Mrs. Baxter exhorting trenchantly (he came nearer to being told he was a fool than had ever happened to him before), the Dean suggesting possible diplomacies, Dr. Tillman, whom they sent for as a reinforcement, declaring that a few simple words, authorised by Sir Winterton, would put the whole matter right. He was obstinate; he had taken up his position and meant to stand by it; his conscience was clear and his honour safe in his own keeping; he would not speak himself and explicitly forbade any statement to be made on his behalf. Surely some power fought for Alexander Quisante in giving him an opponent of this temper!

"If any statement is to be made in reference to the matter," said Sir Winterton, rather red in the face again by now, "I confess to thinking that it would come best from Mr. Quisante. In fact I think that a few words would come very gracefully from Mr. Quisante."

Lady Mildmay caught at the hope. "If it was suggested to him, I'm sure——"

"Suggested!" cried Sir Winterton. "Is it likely I should suggest it or permit any of my friends to do so? I was merely speculating on what might not unnaturally suggest itself to a gentleman in Mr. Quisante's position."

Mrs. Baxter's smile was very eloquent of her opinion on this particular point. The Dean frowned perplexedly.

"There are exigencies to be considered," he stammered. "The views of his supporters——"

"In a matter like this?" asked Sir Winterton in a tone of lofty surprise. The Dean felt that he had rather committed himself, and did not venture to remind his sensitive host that after all Quisante had no knowledge of the truth or falsehood of the story, and could say nothing beyond that he had none. Mrs. Baxter, however, spoke plainly.

"Let me tell you," she said, "that if you expect anything of the sort from Alexander Quisante, you'll find yourself mistaken."

"I don't know that I agree with you there, my dear," said the Dean, entering his usual caveat. "I think very likely Mr. Quisante would be willing to do the proper thing if it were pointed out to him."

"Pointed out!" murmured Sir Winterton, raising his brows. Did gentlemen need to have the proper thing pointed out to them? Did they not see it for themselves and do it? Nay, one might look for more than the mere naked proper thing; from a gentleman the handsome thing was to be expected, and that of his own motion. There could, in Sir Winterton's view, be no doubt of what was in this case the handsome thing.

Unhappily, there is no subject on which greater divergence of opinion exists than that of the proper thing to be done under given circumstances. Here was Sir Winterton holding one view; Japhet Williams held another, and it is to be feared that a section of the inhabitants of Henstead adopted a third. Sir Winterton's cry was honour, Japhet's was duty; the inhabitants would have differed rather even among themselves as to how to describe their motive; party spirit, curiosity, the zest of a personal question, interest in a promising quarrel, mere mischief, all had a hand in producing the applause which greeted Japhet when he rose the next evening and with absolute imperturbability repeated the same question as nearly as possible in the same words. Sir Winterton's answer was not in the same words, but entirely to the same effect. "I've answered that question once, and I won't answer it again," he said. Then came the tumult, and after that a dull unenthusiastic ending, and the drive off through a grinning crowd, which enjoyed Sir Winterton's fury and added to it by a few hateful cries of "Where's Susy Sinnett?" From the outskirts of the town till his own gates were reached Sir Winterton did not speak to his wife. Then he turned to her and said very courteously but most decisively,

"Marion dear, you will oblige me by not accompanying me to any more meetings at present and by not visiting the town just now. I don't choose to expose you to any more such scenes. I can't teach these fellows to respect a lady's presence, but I can protect my wife by ensuring her absence." He looked very chivalrous and very handsome as he made this little speech. But his wife's heart sank; such an attitude could mean nothing but defeat.

"Can't you help us?" she implored of the Dean, when she had got him alone and told him of this new development of her husband's pride or temper. It was evident that Japhet Williams meant, as he had said, to go on putting his plain question till he got a plain answer, and so long as he put his question, Lady Mildmay was not to be present. How soon would Henstead understand that the gentleman who sought to be its member openly declared that he did not consider it a fit place for his wife to enter?

"Something must really be done," said the Dean nervously. "At all hazards." They both knew that "at all hazards" meant in spite of the prohibition and in face of the wrath of Sir Winterton.

Indeed this impulsive gentleman, seated on his high horse, was in urgent need of being saved from himself. Hitherto Japhet's importunity and the attacks of less conscientious opponents had had the natural effect of rousing his supporters to greater enthusiasm and greater zeal. When his fresh step began to be understood, when Lady Mildmay came with him no more, and it dawned upon Henstead that Sir Winterton would not bring her, the very supporters felt themselves offended. Were a few ribald cries and the folly of a wrong-headed old Japhet Williams to outweigh all their loyalty and devotion? Was the town to be judged by its rowdies? They could not but remember that Lady May Quisante sat smiling through the hottest meetings, and one evening had at the last moment saved her husband's platform from being stormed by sitting, composed and immovable, in the very middle of it till the rioters came to a stand a foot from her, and then retreated cowed before her laughter. That was the sort of thing Henstead liked; to be told that it was unworthy of Lady Mildmay's presence was not what it liked. A strong deputation came out to Sir Winterton; he replied from his high horse; the deputation averred that they could not answer for the consequences; Sir Winterton said he did not care a rush about the consequences; the deputation ventured timidly to hint that an excessive care to shield Lady Mildmay's ears from any mention of the Sinnett affair might be misunderstood; Sir Winterton said that he had nothing to do with that; his first duty was to his wife, his second to himself. The deputation retired downcast and annoyed.

"If you're going to do anything, Dan, you'd better do it at once," said Mrs. Baxter.

The Dean, resolved to risk Sir Winterton's anger in Sir Winterton's interest, did something; he wrote covertly to Jimmy Benyon at the Bull, begging him to be riding on the Henstead road at ten o'clock the next morning; the Dean would take a walk and the pair would meet, as it was to seem, accidentally; nothing had been said to Sir Winterton, nothing was to be said at present to Mr. Quisante. The Dean was, in fact, most carefully unofficial, and in no small fright besides; yet he was also curious to know how this new phase of the fight was regarded at the Quisante headquarters.

Jimmy came punctually, greeted the Dean most heartily, and listened to all that he said. The Dean could not quite make out his mood; he seemed uncomfortable and vexed, but he was not embarrassed, and was able to state what the Dean took to be the Quisante position with so much clearness that the Dean could not help wondering whether he had received instructions.

"Quisante's line has been to take absolutely no notice of the whole thing," said Jimmy. "He knows nothing about it, and has had nothing to do with its being brought forward; he's never mentioned it, and he won't. But on the other hand he doesn't feel called upon to fight Mildmay's battle, or to offend his own supporters by defending a man who won't defend himself. As for this business about Lady Mildmay, if Mildmay likes to make such an ass of himself he must take the consequences."

The Dean felt that the Quisante case even put thus bluntly by Jimmy was very strong; Quisante's deft tongue and skilful brain could make it appear irresistible. Strategically retiring from the ground of strict justice, he made an appeal to the feelings.

"Surely neither Mr. Quisante himself nor any of you would wish to win through such an occurrence as this? That would be no satisfaction to you."

"Of course we'd rather win without it," said Jimmy irritably. "It's not our fault. Go to Japhet Williams, or, best of all, persuade Mildmay not to be a fool. Why won't he answer?"

"Have you had any talk with Quisante about it?"

"Very little. He thinks pretty much what I've said."

"Or with Lady May?" asked the Dean with a direct glance.

"She's never mentioned it to me."

"The whole affair is deplorable."

"I don't see what we can do." Jimmy's tone was rather defiant.

The Dean fell into thought and, as the result thereof, made a proposition; it was very much that suggestion to Quisante on which Sir Winterton had frowned so scornfully.

"If," said he, "I could persuade Sir Winterton to give Mr. Quisante a private assurance that the scandal is entirely baseless, would Mr. Quisante state publicly that he was convinced of its falsity and did not wish it to influence the electors in any way?"

"Perhaps he would," said Jimmy.

"I think it would be only the proper thing for him to do," said the Dean rather warmly.

"I don't know about that. Why can't Mildmay say it for himself? But I'll ask Quisante, if you like."

The Dean was only too conscious of the weakness of his cause; he became humble again in thanking Jimmy for this small promise. "And Mr. Quisante'll be glad to have done it, I know, whatever the issue of the fight may be," he ended. The remark received for answer no more than a smile from Jimmy. Jimmy was not sure that among the stress of emotions filling Quisante's heart in case of defeat there would be room for any consoling consciousness of moral rectitude. Perhaps Jimmy himself would not care much about such a solatium. He wanted to win and he wanted Quisante to win; such was the effect of being much with Quisante; and in this matter at least, so far as Jimmy's knowledge went, his champion had acted with perfect correctness. At other times Jimmy might have been, like Sir Winterton, apt to exact something a little beyond correctness, but now the spirit of the fight was on him.

The Dean returned with the rather scanty results of his mission, and after luncheon took his courage in both hands and told Sir Winterton what he had done. But for his years and his station, Sir Winterton would, at the first blush, have called him impertinent; the Dean divined the suppressed epithet and defended himself with skill, but, alas, not without verging on the confines of truth. To say that he had happened to meet Jimmy Benyon was to give less than its due credit to his own ingenuity; to say that Jimmy and he had agreed on the proper thing was rather to interpret than to record Jimmy's brief and not very sanguine utterances. However the Dean's motive was very good, and before the meal ended Sir Winterton forgave him, while still sternly negativing the course which his diplomacy suggested. In fact Sir Winterton was very hard to manage; the Dean understood the Quisante position better and better; Mrs. Baxter gave up her efforts; she had an almost exaggerated belief in the inutility of braying fools in a mortar; she was content to show them the mortar, and if that were not enough to leave them alone. Only the wife persevered, for she thought neither of herself nor of what was right, but only of what might serve her husband. To the meetings he would not speak, to Quisante he might be got to speak; she would not let him alone while there was a chance of it. And at last she prevailed, not by convincing his reason (which indeed was little involved in the matter either way), not by taming his pride, and not by pointing to his interest, but by the old illogical, perhaps in the strictest view immoral, appeal—"For my sake, because I ask you for your love of me!" For his love of her Sir Winterton consented to write a private note to Alexander Quisante, stating for his own satisfaction and for his opponent's information the outline of the true facts of the Sinnett affair. Sir Winterton disliked his task very much but, having to do it, he did it as he did everything, as a gentleman would, frankly, simply, cordially, with an obvious trust in Quisante's chivalry, good faith, and reluctance to fight with any weapons that were not stainless.

"Now we've put it straight," said the Dean gleefully. "He's bound to mention your note and to accept your account, and if he accepts it, his supporters can't help themselves, they must do the same." Sir Winterton agreed that, distasteful as this quasi-appeal to his opponent had been, it could not fail to have the beneficial results which the Dean forecast. There was more cheerfulness at Moors End that evening than had been seen since Japhet Williams rose from the body of the hall, a small but determined Accusing Angel.

It is not so easy to put straight what has once gone crooked, nor so safe to undertake to advise other folks, however much the task may by habit seem to lose half its seriousness. In his heart the Dean was thinking that he had "cornered" Quisante, and Sir Winterton was hoping that he had combined the advantages of pliancy with the privilege of pride. The note that Quisante wrote in answer did nothing to disturb this comfortable state of feeling—unless indeed any danger were foreshadowed in the last line or two; "While, as I have said, most ready to accept your assurance, and desirous, as I have always been, of keeping all purely personal questions in the background, I do not feel myself called upon to express any opinion on the course which you have, doubtless after full consideration, adopted in regard to the requests for a public explanation which have been addressed to you by duly qualified electors of the borough." The Dean felt a little uneasy when that sentence was read out to him; was it possible that he had underrated Quisante's resources and not perceived quite how many ways of escaping from a corner that talented gentleman might discover? Yet there was nothing to quarrel with in the sentence; at the outside it was a courteous intimation of a difference of opinion and of the view (held by every man in the place except Sir Winterton himself) that a simple explanation on a public occasion would have done Sir Winterton's honour no harm and his cause a great deal of good.

Such was the private answer; the public reference was no less neat. First came a ready and ample acceptance of the explanation which Sir Winterton had given. "I accept it unreservedly, I do not repeat it only because it was given to me privately." Then followed an expression of gratitude for the manly and straightforward way in which the speaker felt himself to have been treated by his opponent; then there was an expression of hope that these personal matters might disappear from the contest. "Had I been sensitive, I in my turn might have found matter for complaint, but I was content to place myself in your hands, trusting to your good sense and fairness." (Sir Winterton had not been so content.) "I trust that the episode may be regarded as at an end." Then a pause and—"It is not for me, as I have already observed to my honourable opponent, to express any judgment on the course which he has seen fit to adopt. I have only to accept his word, which I do unhesitatingly, and it is no part of my duty to ask why he preferred to make his explanation to one who is trying to prevent him from sitting in Parliament rather than to those whom he seeks to represent in that high assembly."

This was said gravely and was much cheered. As the cheering went on, a smile gradually bent the speaker's broad expressive mouth; the crowded benches became silent, waiting the fulfilment of the smile's promise. A roguish look came into Quisante's face, he glanced at his audience, then at his friends on the platform, lastly at his wife who sat on the other side of the chairman's table. He spoke lower than was his wont, colloquially, almost carelessly, with an amused intonation. "At any rate," he said, "I trust that Henstead may once more be thought worthy of the presence of——" He paused, spread out his hands, and sank his voice in mock humility—"of other ladies besides—my wife."

It was well done. May's ready laugh was but the first of a chorus, and Quisante, sitting down, knew that his shaft had sped home when somebody cried, "Three cheers for Lady May Quisante!" and they gave them again and again, all standing on their feet. Alas for the Dean! For some men there are many ways out of a corner.



CHAPTER XIII.

NOT SUPERHUMAN.

"I don't set up for being superhuman," said Alexander Quisante with a shrug and a smile at his sister-in-law, "and I should very soon be told of my mistake if I did. I had nothing to do with putting the story about. I never countenanced it in any way. But since it got about, since Mildmay chose to give himself airs and make a fool of himself, and then come to me to get him out of his trouble, I thought myself entitled to give him one little dig."

"Of course you were," agreed Fanny.

"And if they choose to decide the election on that instead of on the Government policy, why, in the first place we can't help it, and in the second we needn't talk about it." He paused and then added with greater gravity, "I have nothing to reproach myself with in the matter."

"What's Mr. Williams going to do?"

"Oh, he made one solemn protest and now, at my request, he'll hold his tongue."

"He's done all the mischief, though," said Jimmy Benyon with much satisfaction.

It was true enough, and the triumph at the Bull equalled the depression at Moors End, where the Dean was aghast at the result of his diplomacy, and Sir Winterton began to perceive that he had vindicated his honour at the cost of his good sense, and his dignity at the price of his popularity. It was not Henstead's moral sense that was against him now, but that far more formidable enemy, Henstead's wounded vanity. The best judges refused to estimate how many votes that ride on the high horse was likely to cost him; but all agreed that the bill would be heavy; even Smiley, his own agent, shook a rueful head over the probable figure. And all this advantage had accrued to the Quisante faction without involving any reproach or any charge of unfair tactics; rather were they praised for moderation, magnanimity, and good-nature.

"To tell the truth," Jimmy whispered to Fanny, "I never felt sure that Quisante would treat it in such a gentlemanly way."

"No, neither did I," Fanny confessed. "I'm so glad about it."

"He's rather proud of himself, though," chuckled Jimmy.

"Yes, I know. Well, we mustn't be too critical," urged Fanny. His public demeanour had been beyond reproach, and after all even persons of more delicate feeling and more exalted position than Quisante are apt to plume their feathers a little in the family circle.

In the whirl of these last few days there was however little time for scrutinising the fine shades of manner or speculating on nice points of conscience. They were all worked to death, they were all inflamed with enthusiasm and the determination to win. As was only becoming, Quisante's wife was the most enthusiastic and the most resolute; a thing not seeming so natural to herself was that she was also happier than she had ever been since her marriage. As the fight grew hotter, Quisante grew greater in her eyes; he had less time to make postures, she less leisure to criticise; if he forgot himself in what he was doing, she could come near to forgetting the side of him she disliked in an admiration of the qualities that attracted her. His praises were in men's mouths beyond Henstead; letters of congratulation came from great folk, and Quisante was told that his speeches had more than a local audience and more than a local influence. Sympathy joined with admiration; he was not only successful, he was brave; for it was a serious question whether his body and his nerves would last out, and every night found him utterly exhausted and prostrate. Yet he never spared himself, he was wherever work was to be done, refused no call, and surrendered not an inch to his old and hated enemy, the physical weakness which had always hindered him. May wrote to Miss Quisante that he was "wonderful, wonderful, wonderful." There she paused, and added after a moment's thought, "It's something to be his wife." And to Mr. Foster she said, "They must elect him, they can't help it, can they?"

"Well, I think we shall win now," said old Foster, smiling, but directing a rather inquisitive glance at her. "Japhet Williams has helped us; not so much as Sir Winterton himself, though."

May's face fell a little. "I didn't mean that," she said. "Oh, I suppose I want to win anyhow, but I'd much rather not win through that."

"Must take what we can get," murmured Foster, quite resignedly.

"I suppose so; and it's not as if my husband, or you, or any of his friends had taken any part in it."

The inquisitive glance ceased; Foster had found out the answer to what it had asked; there were limits to the confidence which existed between Lady May Quisante and her husband. But he only smiled comfortably; Quisante wouldn't talk, he himself was safe, and, if anything had cropped up in talk between him and Japhet, his skill and Japhet's vanity had ensured that the little man should think himself the initiator, inventor, and sole agent in the whole affair.

"We're not responsible for Japhet Williams," said he. "His vote's safe for us now, though, and it means a few besides his own."

"I sometimes wonder," mused May, "whether anybody at an election ever votes one way and not the other simply because he thinks that way right and the other wrong." She laughed, adding, "You don't get the impression that they ever do, canvassing and going about like this."

"Must allow for local feelings, Lady May."

"Yes, I know; and everybody has feelings, and I suppose every place is local. You say a lot of people'll vote for us because Sir Winterton wouldn't let Lady Mildmay come to the town?"

"A better stroke for us than any even Mr. Quisante has done."

"And there's something like that in every constituency, I suppose! How do we get governed even as well as we do?"

Foster looked thoughtful and nursed his foot (in which he had a touch of the gout). "It's all under God," he said gravely. "He turns things to account in ways we can't foresee, Lady May." Was it possible that he was remembering the peculiar qualities of Mr. Japhet Williams? May did not laugh, for Mr. Foster was obviously sincere, but she looked at him with surprise; his religion came in such odd flashes across the homely tints of his worldly wisdom and placid acceptance of things and men as he happened to find them. Henstead was not the Kingdom of Heaven, and he did not pretend to think it wise to act on the assumption that it was. Like Quisante, he did not set up for being superhuman—nor set other people up for it either. May felt that there were lessons to be learnt here; nay, that she was making some progress in them; though she wondered now and then what Weston Marchmont would think of the lessons and of her progress in them.

"The worst of it is," she went on, "that I'm afraid one has to say a lot of things that are not exactly quite true."

"Truer than the other side," Mr. Foster affirmed emphatically, his corpulence seeming to give weight to the dictum as he threw himself forward in his chair.

"Relative truth!" laughed May. "Like No. 77?"

"You must ask Mr. Quisante about that."

"Oh, no, I won't. I'll listen to his speeches about it." She grew grave as she went on. "I've only asked him about one thing all through the election. I had to ask him about that."

"Ah!" murmured Foster, cautiously, vaguely, safely.

"This wretched story about Sir Winterton, you know. And I got into terrible trouble by my question." She laughed a little. "He doesn't as a rule scold me, you know, but he really did. I was very much surprised. Fancy boring you with this! Well, I asked him if he'd had anything to do with reviving the story. I asked him right straight out. Did you think I was like that, Mr. Foster?"

"Pretty well, pretty well," said old Foster; he was smiling, but he was watching her again.

"Was it insulting? Well, you see——" She stopped abruptly; Foster was not, after all, Aunt Maria, and she could not tell him how it was that she might ask her husband questions that sounded insulting. "Anyhow he was very much offended."

Foster still nursed his foot, and now he shifted a little in his chair.

"He gave me his word directly, but told me he was very much hurt at my asking him." She smiled again. "There's a confession of a conjugal quarrel for you, Mr. Foster. Don't talk about it, or Mr. Smiley will have a caricature of us throwing the furniture at one another. I've been very humble ever since, I assure you."

Mr. Foster chuckled. May imagined that his fancy was touched by her suggestion of the caricature; in fact he was picturing Alexander Quisante's indignant disclaimer.

"Don't tell him I said anything to you about it," she added.

"You may be sure I won't," he promised.

It would not have been out of harmony with Mr. Foster's general theological position to consider the sudden and serious development of his gout as a direct judgment on him for a diplomacy that perhaps overstepped legitimate limits, and in another man's case he might have adopted such a view with considerable complacency. When, however, he was laid up and placed hors du combat in the last three critical days, he needed all his faith to reconcile him to one of the most unfathomable instances of the workings of Providence. His grumbles were loud and long, and the directions which he sent from his sick bed were tinged with irritability. For at last the other side had come to its senses; Sir Winterton was affable again, Lady Mildmay was canvassing, and Mr. Smiley had high hopes. Despondency would have fallen on Foster's spirit but for the report of Quisante's exploits, performed in the teeth of the orders of that same Dr. Tillman who had given Sir Winterton such excellent unprofessional advice touching the affair of Tom Sinnett. He gave Quisante just as good counsel, and with just as little result. Then he tried Quisante's wife and found in her what he thought a hardness or an insensibility, or, if that were an unjust view, a sort of fatalism which forbade her to seek to interfere, and reduced her to being a spectator of her husband's doings and destiny rather than a partner in them.

"How can he lie by now?" she asked. "It's impossible; he must see this out whatever happens." Quisante had said exactly the same thing, but his wife's perfect agreement in it seemed strange to the doctor. It was making the man's success more than the man; there was too much of the Spartan wife about it, without the Spartan wife's excuse of patriotism. Something of these feelings found expression in the look with which he regarded May, and he allowed himself to express them more freely to Lady Mildmay, who would have disappointed the most important meeting sooner than face the risk of Sir Winterton's taking cold. He told her how May had said, "He won't stand being coddled," and then had added, with a frankness which the doctor had not become accustomed to, "Besides I should never do it. We aren't in the least like that to one another."

"I felt rather sorry for the man," said the doctor. "It's as if he was a racehorse, and they didn't think so much about him as about a win for the stable."

"Do you like him?" asked Lady Mildmay, merely in natural curiosity. But the doctor started a little as he answered, "Why, no, I don't like him at all." And as he drove home he was thoughtful.

"Well, here we are at last!" said Jimmy Benyon as he sat down to breakfast on the morning of the polling day. "I'm told Mildmay's people were asking for six to four last night. Where's Quisante?"

"He went out just before eight, to catch some of the men who work on the line and can't be back to vote in the evening," said May.

"Lord!" sighed Jimmy in a self-reproachful tone; it was past nine now, and he was only just out of bed. "What are you going to do?"

"Drive and bow and smile and shake hands," said May. "And you're going to and fro in a wagonette of Mr. Williams'—without any springs, you know. And Mr. Dunn's going to take Fanny in one of his waggons; she'll have to sit on a plank without a back all day, so I told her to stay in bed till she has to start at ten."

"It's a devilish difficult question," said Jimmy meditatively, "whether it's all worth it, you know."

"Oh, it's worth more than that," said May lightly, as she sprang up and put on her hat. "It's worth—well, almost anything. Six to four? They expect us to win then?"

"By a neck, yes." He glanced at her and added rather uneasily, "They say friend Japhet's done the trick for us." She made no answer, and he went on hastily, "Old Foster's still in bed, and the waiter says he's written five notes to your husband already—a regular row of them in the bar, you know."

"Last instructions?"

"Oh, somebody else to be nobbled, don't you know; some fellow who wants to marry his deceased wife's sister—or else is afraid he'll have to if they pass the Bill. And there's the butcher in Market Street who's got some trouble about slaughterhouses that I'm simply hanged if I can understand. I jawed with him for half-an-hour yesterday, and then didn't hook him safe."

"Alexander must find time to go and hook him," said May, smiling. "Alexander'll be great on slaughter-houses."

"And at the last minute Smiley's been hinting something about Mildmay giving a bit of land to extend the Recreation Ground. A beastly unscrupulous fellow I call Smiley."

"Oh, poor Mr. Smiley! He wants to win."

"He might play fair, though."

"Might he? Oh, well, I suppose so. We've played fair anyhow—pretty fair, haven't we?"

"Rather!"

"You really think so, Jimmy?" She was serious now; Jimmy reached out his hand and touched hers for a moment; he divined that she was asking him for a verdict and was anxious what it might be.

"Rather!" he said again. "That's all right. We've kept to the rules square enough."

"Then I'm off to bow and smile!" she cried. As she went by she touched his hand again. "Thanks, Jimmy," she said.

Jimmy, left alone, stretched himself, sighed, and lit a cigar; they were nearly out of the wood now, and they had managed to play pretty fair. For his own sake he was glad, since he had been mixed up in the campaign; he had perception enough to be far more glad for May Quisante's.

Through all the fever of that day the same gladness and relief were in her heart in a form a thousandfold more intense. They enabled her to do her bowing and smiling, to hope eagerly, to work unceasingly, to be gay and happy in the excitement of fighting and the prospect of victory. She could put aside the memory of Tom Sinnett; they had not been to blame; let that affair be set off against Smiley's hypothetical extension of the Recreation Ground. She felt that she could face people, above all that she could face the Mildmays when the time came for her to meet them at the declaration of the poll. And as regarded her husband she could do more than praise and more than admire; she could feel tenderness and a touch of remorse as she saw him battling against worse than the enemy, against a deadly weariness and weakness to which he would not yield. From to-morrow she determined to lay to heart the doctor's counsel, to try whether he could not be persuaded to stand a little coddling, whether he might not be brought to, if only she could persuade herself to show him more love. When she looked at the Mildmays she understood what had perhaps been in the doctor's mind; dear Lady Mildmay (she was a woman who immediately claimed that epithet with its expression of mingled affection and ridicule) no doubt overdid a little her pleasant part. She made Sir Winterton a trifle absurd. But then with what chivalry he faced and covered the touch of absurdity, or avoided it without offending the love that caused it! Very glad she was that, when Lady Mildmay asked to be introduced, she could clasp hands with the consciousness that her side had played fair, and by a delicate distant reference could honestly assure the enemy's wife that both she and her husband had looked with disfavour on that unpleasant episode.

She had known she would like Sir Winterton and was not disappointed; she saw that he was very favourably impressed by her, largely, no doubt, because she was handsome, even more because their ways of looking at things would be very much the same; they had the same pride and the same sensitiveness; in humour he was not her match, or he would not have ridden his high horse. She felt that he complimented her in begging her to make him known to Quisante; and this office also she was able to perform with pleasure, because they had played fair. Hope was high in her that night, not merely for this contest, not merely now for her husband's career, but for her life and his, for her and him themselves. If her old fears had been proved wrong, if in face of temptation he had not yielded, if now by honourable means he had made good his footing, things might go better in the future, that constant terror vanish, and there be left only what she admired and what attracted her. For they had kept to the rules square enough; Quisante had played fair.

She heard Sir Winterton tell him so in a friendly phrase, just touched with a pleasantly ornate pompousness; eagerly looking, she saw Quisante accept the compliment just as he should, as a graceful tribute from an antagonist, as no more than his due from anyone who knew him. She smiled to think that she could write and tell Aunt Maria that Sandro was improving, that even his manners grew better and better as success gave him confidence, and confidence produced simplicity. Making a friendly group with their rivals in the ante-room, they were able to forget the little fretful man who paced up and down, carefully avoiding Sir Winterton's eye, but asserting by the obstinate pose of his head and the fierce pucker on his brow that he had done no more than his duty in asking a plain answer to a plain question, and that on Sir Winterton's head, not on his, lay the consequences of evasion.

Presently the group separated. The little heaps of paper on the long table in the inner room had grown from tens to hundreds; the end was near. Quisante's agent stood motionless behind the clerks who counted, Jimmy Benyon looking over his shoulder eagerly. Smiley regarded the heaps for a moment or two and then walked across to Sir Winterton. Through the doorway May saw Sir Winterton bend his head, listen, nod, smile, and turn and whisper to his friends. At the next moment Jimmy Benyon came to the door, caught her eye, smiled, and nodded energetically. The presiding officer looked down the row of men counting to right and left. "Are you all agreed on your figures?" he asked. They exchanged papers, counted, whispered a little, recovered their own papers. "Yes," ran along the row, and the presiding officer pushed back his chair. In a single instant Quisante was the centre of a throng of people shaking his hand, and everybody crowded into the inner room.

"How many?" asked Sir Winterton Mildmay.

"Forty-seven, Sir Winterton," answered Smiley.

So it was over, and Alexander Quisante was again Member for Henstead. "Send somebody to tell Foster," May heard him say before he followed to the window from which the announcement was to be made. He was very pale and walked rather unsteadily. "Stay by Mr. Quisante; I think he's not very well," she whispered to the agent. The next moment two of Sir Winterton's prominent supporters passed her; one spoke to the other half in a whisper. "That damned Sinnett business has done us," he said.

Her cheek flushed suddenly; it was horrible to think that. Still they had played fair, and it was no fault of theirs.

"Let me be the first to congratulate you," said a gentle voice.

She turned and found Lady Mildmay beside her; Sir Winterton's wife was smiling, but there were tears in her eyes.

"And do get your husband home to bed; he looks terribly, terribly tired. I'm afraid he's not nearly as strong as Winterton; but I'm sure you take great care of him."

"Not so much as I ought to." Lady Mildmay, accustomed to straightforward emotions, was puzzled at the half-bitter half-merry tone. "I mean I egg him on when perhaps I ought to hold him back. I know he ought to rest, but I never want him to—never really want it, you know." Lady Mildmay still looked puzzled. "He's at his best working," said May.

"Well, but you must want him to yourself sometimes anyhow, and that's a rest for him."

Oh, the differences of people and fates! That was May's not original but irresistible reflection when Lady Mildmay left her. Want him to herself! Never—or never as Lady Mildmay meant, anyhow. She only wanted a good place whence to look at him.

She had one more encounter before Jimmy Benyon came to take her home. Japhet Williams came up to her and made her shake hands.

"We have got a representative in whom we can have confidence," he said.

"I hope so, Mr. Williams." She smiled to think how exactly she was speaking the truth—a rare privilege in social intercourse.

"Don't think that I resent in any way the distant attitude which Mr. Quisante thought it desirable to take up in regard to my action," pursued Japhet; it seemed odd that such a coil of words could be unrolled from so small a body. "My course was incumbent on me. I recognise that his attitude was proper for him."

"I'm so glad, Mr. Williams," May murmured vaguely.

"I could take the course I did because I had nothing to gain by it, nothing personally. Being personally interested, he could not have moved in the matter. I hope you see my point of view as well as his, Lady May?"

"Oh, perfectly. I—I'm sure you're both right."

"My conscience doesn't blame me," said Japhet solemnly; and something in his manner made May remark to Jimmy, when he came to take her home, "What a lot of excellent people are spoilt by their consciences!"

Quisante had disappeared, engulfed in a vortex of triumphant supporters, carried off by arms linked in his, or perhaps hoisted in uncomfortable grandeur on enthusiastic but unsteady shoulders. The street was densely packed, and Jimmy's apparently simple course of returning straight to the hotel proved to be a work of much time and difficulty. But the stir of life was there, all around them, and May's eyes grew bright as she felt it. Now at least it could not seem a difficult question whether the result were worth the effort; triumph drove out such doubts.

"I'm so glad we've won; I'm so glad we've won," she kept repeating in simple girlish enthusiasm as Jimmy steered her through the crowd, heading towards the Bull whenever he could make a yard or two. "Though I'm awfully sorry for Lady Mildmay," she added once.

So long were they in getting through that on their arrival they found that Quisante had reached home before them. His journey had been hurried; he had been taken faint and the rejoicings were of necessity interrupted; he was upstairs now on the sofa. May ran up, followed by Fanny and Jimmy, passing many groups of anxious friends on the way. Quisante was stretched in a sort of stupor; he was quite white, his eyes were closed. She knelt down by him and called him by his name.

"He's quite done up," said Jimmy, and he went to the sideboard and got hold of the brandy.

"Do keep everybody out," called May, and Fanny shut the door oh half-a-dozen inquisitive people. Both she and Jimmy were looking very serious; May grew frightened when she turned and saw their faces.

"He's only tired; he'll be all right again soon," she protested. "Give me a little brandy and water, Jimmy."

They stood looking at her while she did her best for him; a slight surprise was in their faces; they had never seen her minister to him before. Did she really love him? The question escaped from Jimmy's eyes, and Fanny's acknowledged without answering it. Presently Quisante sighed and opened his eyes.

"Drink some of this," said his wife low and tenderly. "Do drink some." She was kneeling by him, one arm under his shoulder, the other offering the glass.

"We've done it, haven't we?" he murmured, as she tilted the glass to his lips. The drink revived him; with her help he hoisted himself higher on the sofa and looked at her. A smile came on his face; they heard him whisper, "My darling!" Again it struck them both as a little strange that he should call her that. But she smiled in answer and made him drink again.

"Yes, you've won; you always win," they heard her whisper softly. She had forgotten all now, except that he had won, that her faith stood justified, and he lay half-dead from the work of vindicating it. At that moment she would have been no man's if she could not be Alexander Quisante's.

There was a knock at the door; Jimmy Benyon went and opened it; he came back holding a note, and gave it to May; it was addressed to her husband in a pencil scrawl. "A congratulation for you," she said to Quisante. He glanced carelessly and languidly at it, murmuring, "Read it to me, please," and she broke open the sealed envelope. Inside the writing was as negligent a scribble as on the outside, the writing of a man in bed, with a stump of pencil. Old Mr. Foster wrote better when he was up and abroad, so much better that Quisante's tired eyes had not marked the hand for his. "Read it out to me," said Quisante, his eyes now dwelling gratefully on his wife's face, his brain at last resting from the long strain of weeks of effort.

"Yes, I'll read it," she said cheerfully, almost merrily. "We shall be full of congratulations for days now, shan't we?"

She smoothed out the sheet of paper; there were but two or three lines of writing, and she read them aloud. She read aloud the simple indiscreet little hymn of triumph which victory and the safety of a private note lured from old Mr. Foster's usually diplomatic lips:—

"Just done it, thank God. Shouldn't have without Tom Sinnett, and we've got you to thank for that idea too."

She read it all before she seemed to put any meaning into it. A silence followed her reading. She knelt there by him, holding the sheet of note-paper in her hands. Fanny and Jimmy stood without moving, their eyes on her and Quisante. Slowly May rose to her feet. Quisante closed his eyes and moved restlessly on the sofa; he sighed and put his hand up to his head. The slightest of smiles came on May's lips as she stood looking at him for a minute; then she turned to Fanny, saying, "I think he'd better have a little more brandy-and-water." She walked across to the mantelpiece, the crumpled sheet of paper in her hand. She looked at Fanny with the little smile still on her lips as she lit a candle and burnt the note in its flame, dropping the ashes into the grate. Quisante lay as though unconscious, taking no heed of his sister-in-law's proffered services. Jimmy Benyon stood in awkward stillness, looking at May. Suddenly May broke into a laugh.

"Just as well to burn it; it might be misunderstood," said she. Jimmy moved towards her quickly and impulsively. "No, no, I'm all right," she went on. "And we've won, haven't we? I'm going to my room. Look after him." She paused and added, smiling still, "His head's very bad, you know." And so, pale and smiling, she left her husband to their care.

The ashes of Mr. Foster's note seemed to crinkle into a sour grin where they lay on the black-leaded floor of the fire-grate.



CHAPTER XIV.

OPEN EYES.

It is a matter of common observation that the local influences and peculiarities which loom so large before the eyes of both parties during such a struggle as that at Henstead seem to be entirely forgotten after the declaration of the poll, at least by the victorious faction and their friends in the Press and the country. Out of a congeries of conflicting views, fancies, fads, interests, quarrels, and misunderstandings a reasoned and single political verdict is considered to emerge, and great is the credit of the advocate who extracts it from the multitudinous jury. When Quisante had won Henstead, little more was heard of the gentleman with a deceased wife's sister, of the butcher in trouble about slaughter-houses, of Japhet Williams' conscience or Tom Sinnett's affair. The result was taken as an augury of triumph for the party all over the country, where these things had never been heard of and the voices of Henstead did not reach. Unhappily however, as events proved, the victory of Henstead had in the end to be regarded not as the inauguration of a triumphant campaign but as a brilliant exploit performed in face of an overwhelming enemy. To be brief, the Government was beaten, somewhat badly beaten, the great cry was a failure, and there were many casualties in the ranks. Marchmont kept his seat by virtue of personal and hereditary popularity; but Dick Benyon, who had been considered quite safe, lost his, a fate shared by many who had deemed themselves no less secure.

"I suppose you preached your miserable Crusade, as you call it?" said Constantine Blair. They were at dinner at Marchmont's, Morewood and the Dean also being of the company.

"I did, and without it I should have got a worse thrashing," said Dick stoutly; it would be unkind to scrutinise too closely the sincerity of this statement.

"Quisante had the sense to throw it over," growled Constantine; his equanimity was not up to its usual standard.

"It's wisdom to lighten the ship in a storm," smiled Marchmont.

"Yes, and to jettison other people's heavy luggage first," said Morewood.

"The duty of a captain, I suppose," murmured the Dean with a smile.

"You needn't begin with your best guns," argued Dick, a little hotly.

"We can't let Dick appropriate our metaphor to his own purposes," said Marchmont. "As a matter of fact now, had the Crusade much to do with it?"

Morewood interposed before Dick could answer.

"Oh, only as a Crusade. 'Causes' of any kind are properly suspected," said he. "For my part I should imitate the noble simplicity of municipal election bills. 'Down with the rates!' Quite enough, you know. The end is indisputably attractive, and you aren't such an ass as to try to indicate the means. So you get in."

"And don't do it?" The question was Marchmont's.

"Of course not—or what would you have to say next time?"

"The other side has always prevented your doing it?" the Dean suggested.

"Mostly, yes—by factious opposition."

"You fellows don't seem to care," observed Constantine Blair moodily, "but I tell you we're out for four or five years at least."

There was a pause; the accused persons looked at one another; then Marchmont had the courage to observe that the country would perhaps live through the period of calamity before it.

"The country, yes, but how about some of the party?" asked Morewood. "How about that, Blair? You're supposed to be the man who feeds the ravens and providently caters for the sparrows, you know. You'll have your hands full, I should think."

Blair's look expressed the opinion that they trenched on mysteries; he had these little traits of self-importance, sitting funnily on a round and merry face. Marchmont laughed as he turned to Dick and enquired after Jimmy.

"He was helping you, I suppose?"

"Yes, after Quisante was in. He's all right." Dick's tone was slightly reserved.

"Did Quisante help you? He seems to have helped everybody; the man ran about like an electric current."

"I didn't ask him to come to me. I felt, you know——"

"Yes, I see. But Jimmy didn't?"

Dick looked rather puzzled. "I don't quite make Jimmy out about Quisante," he remarked. "He worked for him like a horse all the time, and wrote me letters praising him to the skies. Then when he was in and everybody was cracking him up Jimmy wouldn't open his mouth about him—seemed not to like the subject, you know."

Nobody spoke; they had heard rumours of an event which would bring Jimmy into new relations with Quisante, and they waited for possible information. But Dick did not go on, so it was left to Morewood to make the necessary intrusion into private affairs; he did it willingly, with a malicious grin.

"Thinking him over in the light of a relation, perhaps?" he suggested.

"It would only be a connection anyhow," Dick corrected rather sharply.

"Oh, if that comforts you!" said Morewood, laughing.

"She's a charming girl and I'm awfully glad it's come off."

"Oh, it has?" asked Marchmont.

"Yes, the other day."

"And you're glad in spite of——?"

"Yes, I am. Besides I don't mean anything of that sort. I suppose I know as well as anybody what Quisante is."

"As far as I'm concerned I'll admit you do, and still feel you don't know much," remarked the Dean.

"Well, I wish there were more men like him," said Blair, nodding vigorously.

"Some men would sacrifice anything for their party," remarked Morewood.

Marchmont took no part in the talk about Quisante; he could not praise; for reasons very plain to himself he would not say a word in blame or depreciation. Not only had he been Quisante's rival, but ever since his talk with May he had felt himself the repository of special information, imperfect indeed and shadowy, yet beyond that which the outside world possessed. Besides he had received two letters from her, one written in the course of the fight, gay in tone, expressing an eager interest in her husband's fortunes, keenly appreciative of her husband's brilliancy and bravery. The second, in reply to his telegram of congratulation, had run in another key; an utter weariness and an almost disgusted satiety seemed to have superseded her former interest. Side by side with these he had discovered in the repressed but eloquent words of her greeting to him an intense desire to see him. "I want a change so badly," she wrote. "I want somebody unpractical, unpushing. You must come directly we're back in town." They had been back in town ten days, he knew, but he had not yet obeyed her summons. The thought crossed his mind that the contrast between her two letters was an odd parallel to Dick's description of the puzzling demeanour of his brother Jimmy. Was it a characteristic of the man's to produce these sudden and startling changes of mood towards himself? Marchmont was puzzled at the notion; he was too little able to sympathise with the attraction to find himself capable of understanding the force and extent of the revulsion. "At all events she must be pretty well prepared for what he is by now," he said to himself with the mixture of pity and resentment which his love for her and her rejection of him in Quisante's favour had bred in his mind. For her he was very sorry; it was harder to be quite simply and sincerely sorry that her blindness to what had been so obvious was working out its inevitable result; he would like to console her in any way short of refraining from pointing out how wrong she had been proved.

When, in obedience to another note, he went, he did not at first find May alone. Although he knew Sir Winterton Mildmay, he was not acquainted with his wife, and was surprised when the kind-looking woman who sat with May was introduced to him as Lady Mildmay. This was a quick and thorough burying of the hatchet indeed. "Would you see this in any country except England?" he asked jokingly. Lady Mildmay declared not, adding that there was no bitterness in England because there was only upstanding fighting which left no rancour and indeed bred personal liking. Marchmont thought to himself that Quisante must have been very clever—or that this dear woman (he gave her the epithet at once as everybody did) was not very clever, no cleverer than he had long known handsome Sir Winterton to be. Glancing across at May, he seemed to see an expression of absolute pain on her face, as Lady Mildmay developed these amiable theories.

"I don't believe my husband will ever stand against yours again," she said.

May looked at Marchmont. "They really have taken quite a fancy to one another," she said with a laugh that sounded rather forced. "Funny, isn't it?"

"The speech you invite me to would be a very unfortunate one to address to the wives of the two gentlemen," he answered, smiling. "Funny indeed! I prefer to call it inevitable, don't you, Lady Mildmay?"

May made the slightest gesture of impatience, but a moment later smiled again at Lady Mildmay, saying, "Yes, I suppose that's what I ought to have said."

The visitor rose to go; approaching May, she first shook hands and then stood for a moment with a half-expectant half-imploring air. It was plain that she suggested a kiss. Marchmont looked on rather amused; he knew that May Quisante was not given to effusiveness. It would, however, have been cruel not to kiss Lady Mildmay, and May kissed her with an excellent grace.

"Well," said Marchmont when the door was shut, "she takes defeat prettily. Evidently you've made a conquest, as well as your husband."

"I wish she wouldn't come here," said May, wandering to the window and speaking in a disconsolate voice.

"You don't like her?"

"Like her? Oh, of course I like the dear creature! Who wouldn't? And I like him too." She turned round, smiling a little. "He's so nice, and large, and clean, and direct, and obvious, and simple, you know. I like him just as I like a great rosy apple."

"Hum! I don't eat many of those, do you?"

She laughed, but rather reluctantly. "Perhaps that's more your fault than the apple's. Still I agree. A bite now and then. But they're mostly only to dress the table."

"Why don't you want her to come?"

May sat down and fidgeted with a nick-nack on the table.

"Don't you think being forgiven's rather tiresome work?" she asked. "They don't mean that, I know, but I can't help feeling as if they did."

"I don't see why you should."

She looked full at him for a moment. "No, I didn't suppose you would see it," she said. "Don't stand there, come and sit here,—near me. I've written you three letters, but you don't seem to understand yet that I want to see you." He took the chair near her to which she had pointed; she looked at him, evidently with both pleasure and amusement. "You don't look the least as if you'd been electioneering," she told him in an admiring congratulatory tone.

"I've had the egg-marks brushed off," he explained with the insincere gravity that he knew she liked.

"Will they brush off? Will they always brush off?" she asked, her voice low, her hands nursing her knee, her eyes on his.

"Parables, my lady?"

"Yes. Do you know that we won the election because rosy Sir Winterton was supposed to have flirted with his keeper's daughter, and wouldn't say he hadn't, and wouldn't bring that dear soul where anybody was likely to say he had?"

"No, I hadn't heard that. I thought your husband's——"

"Oh, yes, all that helped. He was splendid. But we shouldn't have done it without the keeper's daughter."

"Vox populi, vox Dei; they're both so hard to understand."

"I've been longing for you," she said, seeming to awake suddenly from her half-dreamy half-playful account of the life she had been living. The speech, with its cruel frankness and its more cruel affection, embittered him.

"When you're tired of a rosy apple, you like a bite at a bitter cherry? One bite; the rest of me, I suppose, is only to dress the table."

She understood him.

"Well, then, you shouldn't come," she protested. "I've been fair about it."

"No, not always; what you write and say now and then isn't fair unless it means something more."

"Oh, I don't know what it means."

Her misery drove away his resentment, and pity filled its place.

"You seem more than usually down on your luck," he said with a smile.

"Yes, a little," she confessed. "It's the Mildmays and—and—the general sham of it, you know." She glanced across at him, smiling. "That's why I longed for you," she said.

It seemed to him that never had fate and never had woman been so cruel. The one so nearly had given what he wanted, the other tantalised with the exhibition of a feeling only just short of what he hoped for, but the more merciless because it seemed not to understand by how narrow an inch it failed of his desires. He spoke to her hardly and coldly.

"You seem to me to choose to try a bit of everything and a bit of everybody," he said. "That's your affair. But I'm not surprised that you don't find it satisfactory."

"I have to try more than I like of some things and some people," she replied. She went on quickly, "I know, oh, I know! Now you're calling me disloyal!"

A curious vexation laid hold of him. Once he had liked her to speak of him in this strain, even as once he had loved to see in her the type of the pure, calm, gracious maiden. Now he knew better both her and himself. The impulse was on him to say that he cared nothing for her disloyalty so that he himself was the cause of it and he himself to reap the benefit. He was quick to read her, and he read in her restless misery some sore discontent with the lot that she had chosen. But he refrained from the words, not in his turn from any loyalty, but rather still from bitterness, from a perverse desire to give her nothing of what she had refused, to leave her in the solitude of spirit which came of her own action. Besides his fastidiousness revolted from plunging him into a position which was so common, and which he, with his dislike of things common, had always counted vulgar. Thus he was silent, and she also sat silent, looking straight before her. At last, however, she spoke.

"Alexander's gone to the city," she said, "to see his stockbroker. The stockbroker's a cousin of—ours." She smiled for a moment. "His name's Mandeville. Since the party's out, we've got to see if we can make some money."

His pity revived; whatever she deserved, it was not this horrible common-place lot of wanting money; that sat so ill on his still stately, no longer faultless, image of her.

"To make some money?" he repeated, half-scornful, half-puzzled.

"Oh, you're rich—you don't know. We spent a lot at Henstead. We must have money: I spend a lot, so does Alexander." She glanced at him, and he saw that something had nearly escaped her lips of which she repented. "Do you ever feel," she went on, apparently by way of amendment, "as if you might be dishonest—under stress of circumstances, you know?"

"I suppose I might. I've never thought about it."

"So dishonest as—as to get into trouble and be sent to prison and so on?"

"Oh, I should hope to be skilful enough to avoid that," he laughed. "Fools ought never to be dishonest; so they invented the 'best policy' proverb to keep themselves straight."

May nodded. "That's it, I think," she said, and fell into silence again. This time he spoke.

"I don't like your wanting money," he said in a low voice.

"No, I know," she smiled. "It's not like what you've always chosen to think I'm like. I ought to live in gilded halls and scatter largesse, oughtn't I?" She laughed a little bitterly. "Perhaps I will, if cousin Mandeville does his duty."

"Meanwhile you feel the temptation to dishonesty?" He paused, but then went on deliberately, "Or, to follow your rule of complete identification, shall I say 'we feel a temptation to dishonesty, do we?'"

"Oh, but we should be clever enough not to be found out, shouldn't we?"

"I think you would."

"You've not half such good reason to think it as I have." She rose, walked to the hearth-rug, and stood facing the grate, her back turned to him. She seemed to him to be looking at a photograph which he noticed now for the first time on the mantelpiece, the picture of a stout elderly man with large clean-shaven face and an expression of tolerant shrewdness. Marchmont moved close to her shoulder and looked also. Perceiving him, she half turned her head towards him. "That's my husband's right-hand man at Henstead," she said. "They understand each other perfectly."

"He looks a sharp fellow."

"So he may be able to understand Alexander? Thank you. I like to have his picture here." Suddenly she turned round full on him, stretching out her hand. "I wish you'd go now," she said. "Have you turned stupid, or don't you see that you must leave me alone, or—or I shall say all sorts of things I mustn't? That man on the mantelpiece there typifies it all. Bless his dear old fat face! I like him so much—and he's such a humbug, and I don't think he knows that he's in the least a humbug. Is sincerity just stupidity?" Her mirth broke out. "Alexander hates my having him there," she whispered; then she drew away, crying, "Go, go."

"I'm off," said he. "But why doesn't Quisante like the old gentleman's picture, and why do you keep it there if he doesn't?"

"And why are none of us perfect—except perhaps the Mildmays? Good-bye." She gave him her hand. "Oh, by the way," she went on, calling him back after he had turned, "have you ever had anything to do with promoting companies or anything of that kind?"

"Well, no, I can't say I have."

"Is it necessarily disreputable?"

"Oh, no," he smiled. "Not necessarily. In fact it's an essential feature in the life of a commercial nation." He was mockingly grave again.

"Thank you very much, Mr. Marchmont. An essential feature of the life in a commercial nation! That's very good." She broke into a laugh. "Now I've got something agreeable to say," she said. He did not move till she shook her head violently at him and pointed to the door. As he went out, she turned back to Mr. Foster's picture, murmuring, "It's no use my setting up for a martyr. Martyrs don't giggle half the time." Had Marchmont heard her, the word "giggle" would have stirred him to real indignation; it was so inappropriate to that low reluctant mirth-laden laugh of hers, which seemed to reveal the feeling that it mocked and extorted the pity that it could not but deride. It sounded again as she stood looking at old Foster the maltster's picture there on the mantelpiece where Quisante did not like to see it.

For what was the meaning of it to her, declared by her perverse determination to keep it there and plain enough to her husband's quick wit? It was the outward sign that her malicious fancy chose of the new state of feeling and the new relation between them which had emerged from the tempest of emotion that Foster's congratulatory note had thrown her into. The tempest had raged in solitude and silence; she had not spoken a word to her sister, or to Jimmy Benyon, hardly a word to Quisante himself. He had his case of course, and she was obliged to hear it, to hear also Foster's own account of how he came to express himself so awkwardly and to write as though Mr. Quisante had originally set the story afloat, whereas he meant only to applaud the tact with which his leader had regulated their conduct towards it after it was started. May said she was quite sure he had meant only this, thanked him for all his services, and begged the photograph. Quisante approved this bearing towards the third party but was not deceived by it himself. When the picture was set on the mantelpiece, he understood that his case was not convincing, that the episode would not fall into the oblivion which he had suggested for it; it would not be forgotten and could not be forgiven. Deeply resentful of this treatment—for he saw nothing very bad in his manoeuvre—he had been moved to protest passionately, to explain volubly, and to offer pledge on pledge. Protests, plaints, and promises broke uselessly against the cool, composed, indulgent friendliness of her bearing. She gave him to understand that no pretences were longer possible between them, but that they would get along without them. She allowed him to see that the one fear left to her on his account was the apprehension that some day he would be found out by other people. Here her terror was as great as it had ever been, for her pride was unbroken; but she did not show him the full extent of her anxiety.

"You ought to be particularly careful, so many people would like to see you come to grief." This, or something like it, was what she had said, by way of dismissing the subject for ever from their conversation with one another. It expressed very well her new position, how she had abandoned those mad hopes of changing him and fallen back on the resolve to see the truth of him herself and make the best of him to others. But the very calmness and friendliness of the warning told him how resolutely she had chosen her path, while they concealed the shame and the fear with which she set herself to tread it. One thing only Quisante understood quite clearly; it was no use acting to her any more; what she wished was that he should cease to act to her. Yet, knowing this, he could not cease, it was not in his nature to cease, and he went on playing his part before eyes that he knew were not imposed on but saw through all his disguises. His old furtiveness of manner came back now when he talked over himself and his affairs with his wife.

But even here he had his triumph, he was not at her mercy, he wielded a power of his own; she recognised it with a smile. Like Aunt Maria, whatever she might think of him she was bound to think constantly of him, to be occupied with his doings and his success, to want to know what was in his mind, yes, although it might be what she hated to find there. For a while he had withdrawn himself from her, ceasing to tell of his life, aims, and doings. If he sought thus to bring her to terms, she proved an easy conquest; she surrendered at once, laughing at herself and at him. "We're partners," she said, "and I must hear all about what you're doing. I can't live without that, you know." And as the price of what she must have she gave him friendship, sympathy, and comradeship, crossing his wishes in nothing and never allowing herself to upbraid except in that small tacit jeer of Mr. Foster's picture on the mantelpiece. For now she believed herself to know the worst, and yet to be able to endure.

What sort of life promised to form itself out of this state of affairs? For after all she was at the beginning of life, and he hardly well into the middle of his. Neither of the two obvious things seemed possible; devotion was out of the question, alienation was forbidden by her unconquerable interest in him and his irrepressible instinct to hold her mind, even if he could not chain her affections. Perhaps a third thing was more usual still, tolerance. But for her at least neither was tolerance the mood, for that is ill to build out of a mixture of intense admiration and scornful contempt. These seemed likely to be the predominant features of her life with her husband, sharing it so equally that the one could never drive out the other nor yet come to fair terms and, dividing the territory, live at peace.

"Perhaps they will some day," she thought, "when I get old and quiet." She was neither old nor quiet now, and her youth cried out against so poor a consolation. Then she told herself that she had the child, only to reproach herself, a moment later, with the insincere repetition of a commonplace. The child was not enough; had her nature been such as to find the child enough, she would certainly never have become Alexander Quisante's wife. Always when she was most strongly repelled by him, there was in the back of her mind the feeling that it was something to be his wife. Only—he mustn't be found out. The worst terror of all, at which her half-jesting words to Marchmont had hinted, came back as she murmured, "I wish we had more money." For money was necessary, as votes had been, and—her eyes strayed to old Foster's portrait on the mantelpiece. The election had cost a lot; no salary was to be looked for now; both by policy and by instinct Quisante was lavish; she herself had no aptitude for small economies. Money was wanted very much indeed in Grosvenor Road.

It was on the way, though. This was the news that Quisante, in the interval between his return from electioneering and the meeting of Parliament, brought back day by day from his excursions to the City and his conversations with Mandeville. He was careful to explain to his wife that he was no "guinea-pig," that he did not approve of the animal, and would never use his position to pick up gain in that way. But he had leisure—at least he could make time—and some of it he proposed to devote to starting a really legitimate and highly lucrative undertaking. The Alethea Printing Press was to revolutionise a great many things besides the condition of Quisante's finances; it was not an ordinary speculative company. Marchmont's phrase came in here, and May used it neatly and graciously. Quisante, much encouraged, plunged into an account of the great invention; if only it worked as it was certain to work, there was not one fortune but many fortunes in it. "And it will work?" she asked. "If we can get the capital," he answered with a confident air. "I shall try to interest all my friends in it," he went on. "You can help me there." May looked doubtful, and Quisante grew more eloquent. At last he held up a sheaf of papers, saying triumphantly,

"Here are favourable reports from all the leading experts. We shall have an array of them in the prospectus. Of course they're absolutely impartial, and they really leave no room for doubt." He held them out to her, but she leant back with her hands in her lap.

"I shouldn't understand them," she protested. "But they all agree, do they?"

"Yes, all," he said emphatically. "Well, all except one." His brow wrinkled a little. "Mandeville insisted on having an opinion from Professor Maturin. I was against it. Maturin's absurdly pessimistic."

"He's a great man, isn't he?"

"Oh, yes, I suppose so,—he's got a great reputation anyhow."

"And he's against you?"

"The fact is that his is only—only a draft report. So far as it goes, it's not encouraging, but he's never had the facts really laid before him."

"You'd better go and lay them before him," she said very gravely.

Quisante caught eagerly at the suggestion.

"Exactly what I proposed to Mandeville!" he cried. "The prospectus won't be out for nearly a month yet, and I shall go and see Maturin. I know——" He rose and began to walk about. "I know Maturin is wrong, and I know that I can show him he's wrong. I only want an hour with him to bring him round to my view, to the true view."

"Well, why haven't you been to see him?"

"I tried to go, but he's ill and not equal to business. As soon as he gets better I shall go. To put his report in as it stands would not only do us infinite harm—in fact we couldn't think of it—but it wouldn't be just to him."

"But if he won't change his opinion?"

"Oh, he must, he will. I tell you it's as plain as a pikestaff, when once it's properly explained."

"I'm sure you'll be able to convert him, if anyone can," said May soothingly.

"I must," said Quisante briefly, and sat down to his papers again.

For an hour or two he worked steadily, without a pause, without an apparent hesitation. That fine machine of his was ploughing its straight unfaltering way through details previously unfamiliar and through problems which he had never studied. From five to seven she sat with a book in her hands, feigning to read, really watching her husband. He could not fail, she said to herself; he would make the Alethea Printing Press a success, irrespective of the actual merits of it. Was that possible? It seemed almost possible as she looked at him.

"It's bound to go," he said at last, pushing away the papers. "I'm primed now, and I can convince old Maturin in half an hour." He held up the Professor's report. "He must withdraw this and give us another."

Alas, there are things before which even will and energy and brains must bow. As he spoke the servant came in, bringing the Evening Standard. May took it, glanced at the middle page, and then, with a little start, looked across at her husband. He saw her glance. "Any news?" he asked.

"The Professor can't be convinced," she said. "His illness took a sudden turn for the worse last night and he died this afternoon at three o'clock."

Quisante sat quite still for a few minutes, the dead Professor's report on the Alethea Printing Press still in his fingers.

"What'll you do now?" she asked, with the smile of curiosity which she always had ready for his plans. Would he pursue the Professor beyond Charon's stream?

He hesitated a little, glancing at her rather uneasily. At last he spoke.

"One thing at all events is clear to me," he said. "This thing doesn't represent a reasoned and well-informed opinion." He folded it up carefully and placed it by itself in a long envelope. "We must consider our course," he ended.

In a flash, by an instinct, May knew what their course would be and at whose dictation it would be followed.

"Of course," said Quisante, "all this is strictly between ourselves."

Her cheek flushed a little. "You mustn't tell me any more business secrets. I don't like them," said she, and she turned away to escape the quick, would-be covert glance that she knew he would direct at her.

Money was necessary; votes had been necessary; old Foster smiled in fat shrewdness from the mantelpiece. May Quisante was less sure that she knew the worst.



CHAPTER XV.

A STRANGE IDEA.

The next few weeks were a time of restless activity with Alexander Quisante. Again he was like an electric current, not travelling now from constituency to constituency, but between Westminster and his cousin Mandeville's offices in the City. In both places he was very busy. His leader had declared for a waiting policy, and an interval in which the demoralisation of defeat should pass away; the party must feel its feet again, the great man said. Constantine Blair was full of precedents for the course, quoting Lord Melbourne, Sir Robert Peel, Sir James Graham, and all the gods of the Parliamentarian. Brusquely and almost rudely Quisante brushed him, his gods, and his leader on one side, and raised the standard of fierce and immediate battle. The majority was composite; his quick eye saw the spot where a wedge might be inserted between the two component parts and driven home till the gap yawned wide and scission threatened. The fighting men needed only to be shown where to fight; they followed enthusiastically the man who led them to the field. Leaders shook grey heads, and leader-writers disclaimed a responsibility which prima facie had never rested on them; Quisante was told that he would wreck the party for a quarter of a century to come. It would perhaps have been possible to meet Constantine Blair's precedents with other precedents, to quote newer gods against his established deities. That was not "Sandro's way"; here again he was content to be an ancestor, the originator of his methods, and the sufficient authority for them.

He was justified. The spirit of his fighting men ran high, and his fighting men's wives grew gracious to him. The majority, if they scowled at him (as was only to be hoped), began to scowl furtively at one another also and to say that certain questions, on which they were by no means of one mind, could not permanently be shirked and kept in the background. Some of them asked what their constituents had sent them to Westminster for, a question always indicative of perturbation in the parliamentary mind; in quiet times it is not raised. The Government papers took to observing that they did not desire to hurry or embarrass the Government, but that time was running on and it would be no true friendship to advise it to ignore the feeling which existed among an important, if numerically small, section of its followers. Altogether at the opening of the session the majority was much less happy, the minority in far finer feather, than anybody had expected. Only officialdom or ignorance could refuse the main credit to Alexander Quisante.

"I declare," said Lady Castlefort—and her opinion was not one to neglect—"May Gaston was right to take the man after all. He'll be Prime Minister." And she settled her pince-nez and looked round for contradiction. She loved argument but had made the mistake of growing too important to be differed from. None the less on this occasion a sweet little voice spoke up in the circle.

"I wouldn't marry him if he were fifty times Prime Minister," said Lady Richard Benyon. "He's odious."

"God bless me!" murmured the Countess, genuinely startled. "Well, you'll see, my dear," she went on, nodding emphatically. "He's the only man among them." Her eye fell on Weston Marchmont. "Oh, yes, I see you're there," she said, "and I'm very glad you should be."

"It's always a pleasure to be here," he smiled urbanely.

"Especially, apparently, when you ought to be at the House," she retorted, glancing at the clock. "However to-day you've heard more truth here than you're likely to there, so I forgive you."