"Now, of course, she insists on my marrying somebody with money. As if any chaperon would look at me! Two years ago I did make up to a nice girl—a real nice girl—and only a thousand a year!—nothing so tremendous, after all. But her mother twice carried her off, in the middle of a rattling ball, because she had engaged herself to me—just like sending a naughty child to bed! And the next time the mother made me take her down to supper, and expounded to me her view of a chaperon's duties: 'My business, Mr. Forbes'—you should have seen her stony eye—'is to mar, not to make. The suitable marriages make themselves, or are made in heaven. I have nothing to do with them, except to keep a fair field. The unsuitable marriages have to be prevented, and will be prevented. You understand me?' 'Perfectly,' I said. 'I understand perfectly. To mar is human, and to make divine? Thank you. Have some more jelly? No? Shall I ask for your carriage? Good-night.' But Lady Niton won't believe a word of it! She thinks I've only to ask and have. She'll be rude to Ettie, and I shall have to punch her head—metaphorically. And how can you punch a person's head when they've lent you money?"

Diana could only laugh, and commend him to his Ettie, who, to judge from her letters, was a girl of sense, and might be trusted to get him out of his scrape.

* * * * *

Meanwhile, Ferrier, the man of affairs, statesman, thinker, and pessimist, found in his new friendship with Diana at once that "agreement," that relaxation, which men of his sort can only find in the society of those women who, without competing with them, can yet by sympathy and native wit make their companionship abundantly worth while; and also, a means, as it were, of vicarious amends, which he very eagerly took.

He was, in fact, ashamed for Lady Lucy; humiliated, moreover, by his own small influence with her in a vital matter. And both shame and humiliation took the form of tender consideration for Lady Lucy's victim.

It did not at all diminish the value of his kindness, that—most humanly—it largely showed itself in what many people would have considered egotistical confessions to a charming girl. Diana found a constant distraction, a constant interest, in listening. Her solitary life with her scholar father had prepared her for such a friend. In the overthrow of love and feeling, she bravely tried to pick up the threads of the old intellectual pleasures. And both Ferrier and Chide, two of the ablest men of their generation, were never tired of helping her thus to recover herself. Chide was an admirable story-teller; and his mere daily life had stored him with tales, humorous and grim; while Ferrier talked history and poetry, as they strolled about Siena or Perugia; and, as he sat at night among the letters of the day, had a score of interesting or amusing comments to make upon the politics of the moment. He reserved his "confessions," of course, for the tete-a-tete of country walks. It was then that Diana seemed to be holding in her girlish hands something very complex and rare; a nature not easily to be understood by one so much younger. His extraordinary gifts, his disinterested temper, his astonishing powers of work raised him in her eyes to heroic stature. And then some very human weakness, some natural vanity, such as wives love and foster in their husbands, but which, in his case appeared merely forlorn and eccentric—some deep note of loneliness—would touch her heart, and rouse her pity. He talked generally with an amazing confidence, not untouched perhaps with arrogance, of the political struggle before him; believed he should carry the country with him, and impose his policy on a divided party. Yet again and again, amid the flow of hopeful speculation, Diana became aware, as on the first evening of Assisi, of some hidden and tragic doubt, both of fate and of himself, some deep-rooted weariness, against which the energy of his talk seemed to be perpetually reacting and protesting. And the solitariness and meagreness of his life in all its personal and domestic aspects appalled her. She saw him often as a great man—a really great man—yet starved and shelterless—amid the storms that were beating up around him.

The friendship between him and Chide appeared to be very close, yet not a little surprising. They were old comrades in Parliament, and Chide was in the main a whole-hearted supporter of Ferrier's policy and views; resenting in particular, as Diana soon discovered, Marsham's change of attitude. But the two men had hardly anything else in common. Ferrier was an enormous reader, most variously accomplished; while his political Whiggery was balanced by a restless scepticism in philosophy and religion. For the rest he was an ascetic, even in the stream of London life; he cared nothing for most of the ordinary amusements; he played a vile hand at whist (bridge had not yet dawned upon a waiting world); he drank no wine, and was contentedly ignorant both of sport and games.

Chide, on the other hand, was as innocent of books as Lord Palmerston. All that was necessary for his career as a great advocate he could possess himself of in the twinkling of an eye; his natural judgment and acuteness were of the first order; his powers of eloquence among the most famous of his time; but it is doubtful whether Lady Niton would have found him much better informed about the politics of her youth than Barton himself; Sir James, too, was hazy about Louis Philippe, and could never remember, in the order of Prime Ministers, whether Canning or Lord Liverpool came first. With this, he was a simple and devout Catholic; loved on his holiday to serve the mass of some poor priest in a mountain valley; and had more than once been known to carry off some lax Catholic junior on his circuit to the performance of his Easter duties, willy-nilly—by a mixture of magnetism and authority. For all games of chance he had a perfect passion; would play whist all night, and conduct a case magnificently all day. And although he was no sportsman in the ordinary sense, having had no opportunities in a very penurious youth, he had an Irishman's love of horseflesh, and knew the Derby winners from the beginning with as much accuracy as Macaulay knew the Senior Wranglers.

Yet the two men loved, respected, and understood each other. Diana wondered secretly, indeed, whether Sir James could have explained to her the bond between Ferrier and Lady Lucy. That, to her inexperience, was a complete mystery! Almost every day Ferrier wrote to Tallyn, and twice a week at least, as the letters were delivered at table d'hote, Diana could not help seeing the long pointed writing on the thin black-edged paper which had once been for her the signal of doom. She hardly suspected, indeed, how often she herself made the subject of the man's letters. Ferrier wrote of her persistently to Lady Lucy, being determined that so much punishment at least should be meted out to that lady. The mistress of Tallyn, on her side, never mentioned the name of Miss Mallory. All the pages in his letters which concerned her might never have been written, and he was well aware that not a word of them would ever reach Oliver. Diana's pale and saddened beauty; the dignity which grief, tragic grief, free from all sordid or ignoble elements, can infuse into a personality; the affection she inspired, the universal sympathy that was felt for her: he dwelt on these things, till Lady Lucy, exasperated, could hardly bring herself to open the envelopes which contained his lucubrations. Could any subject, in correspondence with herself, be more unfitting or more futile?—and what difference could it all possibly make to the girl's shocking antecedents?

* * * * *

One radiant afternoon, after a long day of sight-seeing, Diana and Mrs. Colwood retreated to their rooms to write letters and to rest; Forbes was hotly engaged in bargaining for an Umbrian primitif, which he had just discovered in an old house in a back street, whither, no doubt, the skilful antiquario had that morning transported it from his shop; and Sir James had gone out for a stroll, on the splendid road which winds gradually down the hill on which Perugia stands, to the tomb of the Volumnii, on the edge of the plain, and so on to Assisi and Foligno, in the blue distance.

Half-way down he met Ferrier, ascending from the tomb. Sir James turned, and they strolled back together. The Umbrian landscape girdling the superb town showed itself unveiled. Every gash on the torn white sides of the eastern Apennines, every tint of purple or porcelain-blue on the nearer hills, every plane of the smiling valley as it wound southward, lay bathed in a broad and searching light which yet was a light of beauty—of infinite illusion.

"I must say I have enjoyed my life," said Ferrier, abruptly, as they paused to look back, "though I don't put it altogether in the first class!"

Sir James raised his eyebrows—smiled—and did not immediately reply.

"Chide, old fellow," Ferrier resumed, turning to him, "before I left England I signed my will. Do you object that I have named you one of the two executors?"

Sir James gave him a cordial glance.

"All right, I'll do my best—if need arises. I suppose, Johnnie, you're a rich man?"

The name "Johnnie," very rarely heard between them, went back to early days at the Bar, when Ferrier was for a time in the same chambers with the young Irishman who, within three years of being called, was making a large income; whereas Ferrier had very soon convinced himself that the Bar was not for him, nor he for the Bar, and being a man of means had "plumped" for politics.

"Yes, I'm not badly off," said Ferrier; "I'm almost the last of my family; and a lot of money has found its way to me first and last. It's been precious difficult to know what to do with it. If Oliver Marsham had stuck to that delightful girl I should have left it to him."

Sir James made a growling sound, more expressive than articulate.

"As it is," Ferrier resumed, "I have left half of it to my old Oxford college, and half to the University."

Chide nodded. Presently a slight flush rose in his very clear complexion, and he looked round on his companion with sparkling eyes.

"It is odd that you should have started this subject. I too have just signed a new will."

"Ah!" Ferrier's broad countenance showed a very human curiosity. "I believe you are scarcely more blessed with kindred than I?"

"No. In the main I could please myself. I have left the bulk of what I had to leave—to Miss Mallory."

"Excellent!" cried Ferrier. "She treats you already like a daughter."

"She is very kind to me," said Sir James, with a touch of ceremony that became him. "And there is no one in whom I feel a deeper interest."

"She must be made happy!" exclaimed Ferrier—"she must! Is there no one—besides Oliver?"

Sir James drew himself up. "I hope she has put all thought of Oliver out of her mind long since. Well!—I had a letter from Lady Felton last week—dear woman that!—all the love-affairs in the county come to roost in her mind. She talks of young Roughsedge. Perhaps you don't know anything of the gentleman?"

He explained, so far as his own knowledge went. Ferrier listened attentively. A soldier? Good. Handsome, modest, and capable?—better. Had just distinguished himself in this Nigerian expedition—mentioned in despatches last week. Better still!—so long as he kept clear of the folly of allowing himself to be killed. But as to the feelings of the young lady?

Sir James sighed. "I sometimes see in her traces of—of inheritance—which make one anxious."

Ferrier's astonishment showed itself in mouth and eyes.

"What I mean is," said Sir James, hastily, "a dramatic, impassioned way of looking at things. It would never do if she were to get any damned nonsense about 'expiation,' or not being free to marry, into her head."

Ferrier agreed, but a little awkwardly, since the "damned nonsense" was Lady Lucy's nonsense, and both knew it.

They walked slowly back to Assisi, first putting their elderly heads together a little further on the subject of Diana, and then passing on to the politics of the moment—to the ever present subject of the party revolt, and its effect on the election.

"Pshaw!—let them attack you as they please!" said Chide, after they had talked awhile. "You are safe enough. There is no one else. You are like the hero in a novel, 'the indispensable.'"

Ferrier laughed.

"Don't be so sure. There is always a 'supplanter'—when the time is ripe."

"Where is he? Who is he?"

"I had a very curious letter from Lord Philip this morning," said Ferrier, thoughtfully.

Chide's expression changed.

Lord Philip Darcy, a brilliant but quite subordinate member of the former Liberal Government, had made but occasional appearances in Parliament during the five years' rule of the Tories. He was a traveller and explorer, and when in England a passionate votary of the Turf. An incisive tongue, never more amusing than when it was engaged in railing at the English workman and democracy in general, a handsome person, and a strong leaning to Ritualism—these qualities and distinctions had not for some time done much to advance his Parliamentary position. But during the preceding session he had been more regular in his attendance at the House, and had made a considerable impression there—as a man of eccentric, but possibly great ability. On the whole, he had been a loyal supporter of Ferrier's; but in two or three recent speeches there had been signs of coquetting with the extremists.

Ferrier, having mentioned the letter, relapsed into silence. Sir James, with a little contemptuous laugh, inquired what the nature of the letter might be.

"Oh, well, he wants certain pledges." Ferrier drew the letter from his pocket, and handed it to his friend. Sir James perused it, and handed it back with a sarcastic lip.

"He imagines you are going to accept that programme?"

"I don't know. But it is clear that the letter implies a threat if I don't."

"A threat of desertion? Let him."

"That letter wasn't written off his own bat. There is a good deal behind it. The plot, in fact, is thickening. From the letters of this morning I see that a regular press campaign is beginning."

He mentioned two party papers which had already gone over to the dissidents—one of some importance, the other of none.

"All right," said Chide; "so long as the Herald and the Flag do their duty. By-the-way, hasn't the Herald got a new editor?"

"Yes; a man called Barrington—a friend of Oliver's."

"Ah!—a good deal sounder on many points than Oliver!" grumbled Sir James.

Ferrier did not reply.

Chide noticed the invariable way in which Marsham's name dropped between them whenever it was introduced in this connection.

As they neared the gate of the town they parted, Chide returning to the hotel, while Ferrier, the most indefatigable of sight-seers, hurried off toward San Pietro.

He spent a quiet hour on the Peruginos, deciding, however, with himself in the end that they gave him but a moderate pleasure; and then came out again into the glow of an incomparable evening. Something in the light and splendor of the scene, as he lingered on the high terrace, hanging over the plain, looking down as though from the battlements, the flagrantia moenia of some celestial city, challenged the whole life and virility of the man.

"Yet what ails me?" he thought to himself, curiously, and quite without anxiety. "It is as though I were listening—for the approach of some person or event—as though a door were open—or about to open—"

What more natural?—in this pause before the fight? And yet politics seemed to have little to do with it. The expectancy seemed to lie deeper, in a region of the soul to which none were or ever had been admitted, except some friends of his Oxford youth—long since dead.

And, suddenly, the contest which lay before him appeared to him under a new aspect, bathed in a broad philosophic air; a light serene and transforming, like the light of the Umbrian evening. Was it not possibly true that he had no future place as the leader of English Liberalism? Forces were welling up in its midst, forces of violent and revolutionary change, with which it might well be he had no power to cope. He saw himself, in a waking dream, as one of the last defenders of a lost position. The day of Utopias was dawning; and what has the critical mind to do with Utopias? Yet if men desire to attempt them, who shall stay them?

Barton, McEwart, Lankester—with their boundless faith in the power of a few sessions and measures to remake this old, old England—with their impatiences, their readiness at any moment to fling some wild arrow from the string, amid the crowded long-descended growths of English life: he felt a strong intellectual contempt both for their optimisms and audacities—mingled, perhaps; with a certain envy.

Sadness and despondency returned. His hand sought in his pocket for the little volume of Leopardi which he had taken out with him. On that king of pessimists, that prince of all despairs, he had just spent half an hour among the olives. Could renunciation of life and contempt of the human destiny go further?

Well, Leopardi's case was not his. It was true, what he had said to Chide. With all drawbacks, he had enjoyed his life, had found it abundantly worth living.

And, after all, was not Leopardi himself a witness to the life he rejected, to the Nature he denounced. Ferrier recalled his cry to his brother: "Love me, Carlo, for God's sake! I need love, love, love!—fire, enthusiasm, life."

"Fire, enthusiasm, life." Does the human lot contain these things, or no? If it does, have the gods mocked us, after all?

Pondering these great words, Ferrier strolled homeward, while the outpouring of the evening splendor died from Perusia Augusta, and the mountains sank deeper into the gold and purple of the twilight.

As for love, he had missed it long ago. But existence was still rich, still full of savor, so long as a man's will held his grip on men and circumstance.

All action, he thought, is the climbing of a precipice, upheld above infinity by one slender sustaining rope. Call it what we like—will, faith, ambition, the wish to live—in the end it fails us all. And in that moment, when we begin to imagine how and when it may fail us, we hear, across the sea of time, the first phantom tolling of the funeral bell.

There were times now when he seemed to feel the cold approaching breath of such a moment. But they were still invariably succeeded by a passionate recoil of life and energy. By the time he reached the hotel he was once more plunged in all the preoccupations, the schemes, the pugnacities of the party leader.

* * * * *

A month later, on an evening toward the end of June, Dr. Roughsedge, lying reading in the shade of his little garden, saw his wife approaching. He raised himself with alacrity.

"You've seen her?"

"Yes."

With this monosyllabic answer Mrs. Roughsedge seated herself, and slowly untied her bonnet-strings.

"My dear, you seem discomposed."

"I hate men!" said Mrs. Roughsedge, vehemently.

The doctor raised his eyebrows. "I apologize for my existence. But you might go so far as to explain."

Mrs. Roughsedge was silent.

"How is that child?" said the doctor, abruptly. "Come!—I am as fond of her as you are."

Mrs. Roughsedge raised her handkerchief.

"That any man with a heart—" she began, in a stifled voice.

"Why you should speculate on anything so abnormal!" cried the doctor, impatiently. "I suppose your remark applies to Oliver Marsham. Is she breaking her own heart?—that's all that signifies."

"She is extremely well and cheerful."

"Well, then, what's the matter?"

Mrs. Roughsedge looked out of the window, twisting her handkerchief.

"Nothing—only—everything seems done and finished."

"At twenty-two?" The doctor laughed, "And it's not quite four months yet since the poor thing discovered that her doll was stuffed with sawdust. Really, Patricia!"

Mrs. Roughsedge slowly shook her head.

"I suspect what it all means," said her husband, "is that she did not show as much interest as she ought in Hugh's performance."

"She was most kind, and asked me endless questions. She made me promise to bring her the press-cuttings and read her his letters. She could not possibly have shown more sympathy."

"H'm!—well, I give it up."

"Henry!"—his wife turned upon him—"I am convinced that poor child will never marry!"

"Give her time, my dear, and don't talk nonsense!"

"It isn't nonsense! I tell you I felt just as I did when I went to see Mary Theed, years ago—you remember that pretty cousin of mine who became a Carmelite nun?—for the first time after she had taken the veil. She spoke to one from another world—it gave one the shivers!—and was just as smiling and cheerful over it as Diana—and it was just as ghastly and unbearable and abominable—as this is."

"Well, then," said the doctor, after a pause, "I suppose she'll take to good works. I hope you can provide her with a lot of hopeless cases in the village. Did she mention Marsham at all?"

"Not exactly. But she asked about the election—"

"The writs are out," interrupted the doctor. "I see the first borough elections are fixed for three weeks hence; ours will be one of the last of the counties; six weeks to-day."

"I told her you thought he would get in."

"Yes—by the skin of his teeth. All his real popularity has vanished like smoke. But there's the big estate—and his mother's money—and the collieries."

"The Vicar tells me the colliers are discontented—all through the district—and there may be a big strike—"

"Yes, perhaps in the autumn, when the three years' agreement comes to an end—not yet. Marsham's vote will run down heavily in the mining villages, but it'll serve—this time. They won't put the other man in."

Mrs. Roughsedge rose to take off her things, remarking, as she moved away, that Marsham was said to be holding meetings nightly already, and that Lady Lucy and Miss Drake were both hard at work.

"Miss Drake?" said the doctor, looking up. "Handsome girl! I saw Marsham in a dog-cart with her yesterday afternoon."

Mrs. Roughsedge flushed an angry red, but she said nothing. She was encumbered with parcels, and her husband rose to open the door for her. He stooped and looked into her face.

"You didn't say anything about that, Patricia, I'll be bound!"

* * * * *

Meanwhile, Diana was wandering about the Beechcote garden, with her hands full of roses, just gathered. The garden glowed under the westering sun. In the field just below it the silvery lines of new-cut hay lay hot and fragrant in the quivering light. The woods on the hill-side were at the richest moment of their new life, the earth-forces swelling and rioting through every root and branch, wild roses climbing every hedge—the miracle of summer at its height.

Diana sat down upon a grass-bank, to look and dream. The flowers dropped beside her; she propped her face on her hands.

The home-coming had been hard. And perhaps the element in it she had felt most difficult to bear had been the universal sympathy with which she had been greeted. It spoke from the faces of the poor—the men and women, the lads and girls of the village; with their looks of curiosity, sometimes frank, sometimes furtive or embarrassed. It was more politely disguised in the manners and tones of the gentle people; but everywhere it was evident; and sometimes it was beyond her endurance.

She could not help imagining the talk about her in her absence; the discussion of the case in the country-houses or in the village. To the village people, unused to the fine discussions which turn on motive and environment, and slow to revise an old opinion, she was just the daughter—

She covered her eyes—one hideous word ringing brutally, involuntarily, through her brain. By a kind of miserable obsession the talk in the village public-houses shaped itself in her mind. "Ay, they didn't hang her because she was a lady. She got off, trust her! But if it had been you or me—"

She rose, trembling, trying to shake off the horror, walking vaguely through the garden into the fields, as though to escape it. But the horror pursued her, only in different forms. Among the educated people—people who liked dissecting "interesting" or "mysterious" crimes—there had been no doubt long discussions of Sir James Chide's letter to the Times, of Sir Francis Wing's confession. But through all the talk, rustic or refined, she heard the name of her mother bandied; forever soiled and dishonored; with no right to privacy or courtesy any more—"Juliet Sparling" to all the world: the loafer at the street corner—the drunkard in the tavern—

The thought of this vast publicity, this careless or cruel scorn of the big world—toward one so frail, so anguished, so helpless in death—clutched Diana many times in each day and night. And it led to that perpetual image in the mind which we saw haunting her in the first hours of her grief, as though she carried her dying mother in her arms, passionately clasping and protecting her, their faces turned to each other, and hidden from all eyes besides.

Also, it deadened in her the sense of her own case—in relation to the gossip of the neighborhood. Ostrich-like, she persuaded herself that not many people could have known anything about her five days' engagement. Dear kind folk like the Roughsedges would not talk of it, nor Lady Lucy surely. And Oliver himself—never!

She had reached a point in the field walk where the hill-side opened to her right, and the little winding path was disclosed which had been to her on that mild February evening the path of Paradise. She stood still a moment, looking upward, the deep sob of loss rising in her throat.

But she wrestled with herself, and presently turned back to the house, calm and self-possessed. There were things to be thankful for. She knew the worst. And she felt herself singularly set free—from ordinary conventions and judgments. Nobody could ever quarrel with her if, now that she had come back, she lived her own life in her own way. Nobody could blame her—surely most people would approve her—if she stood aloof from ordinary society, and ordinary gayeties for a while, at any rate. Oh! she would do nothing singular or rude. But she was often tired and weak—not physically, but in mind. Mrs. Roughsedge knew—and Muriel.

Dear Hugh Roughsedge!—he was indeed a faithful understanding friend. She was proud of his letters; she was proud of his conduct in the short campaign just over; she looked forward to his return in the autumn. But he must not cherish foolish thoughts or wishes. She would never marry. What Lady Lucy said was true. She had probably no right to marry. She stood apart.

But—but—she must not be asked yet to give herself to any great mission—any set task of charity or philanthropy. Her poor heart fluttered within her at the thought, and she clung gratefully to the recollection of Marion's imperious words to her. That exaltation with which, in February, she had spoken to the Vicar of going to the East End to work had dropped—quite dropped.

Of course, there was a child in the village—a dear child—ill and wasting—in a spinal jacket, for whom one would do anything—just anything! And there was Betty Dyson—plucky, cheerful old soul. But that was another matter.

What, she asked, had she to give the poor? She wanted guiding and helping and putting in the right way herself. She could not preach to any one—wrestle with any one. And ought one to make out of others' woes plasters for one's own? To use the poor as the means of a spiritual "cure" seemed a dubious indecent thing; more than a touch in it of arrogance—or sacrilege.

* * * * *

Meanwhile she had been fighting her fight in the old ways. She had been falling back on her education, appealing to books and thought, reminding herself of what the life of the mind had been to her father in his misery, and of those means of cultivating it to which he would certainly have commended her. She was trying to learn a new foreign language, and, under Marion Vincent's urging, the table in the little sitting-room was piled with books on social and industrial matters, which she diligently read and pondered.

It was all struggle and effort. But it had brought her some reward. And especially through Marion Vincent's letters, and through the long day with Marion in London, which she had now to look back upon. For Miss Vincent and Frobisher had returned, and Marion was once more in her Stepney rooms. She was apparently not much worse; would allow no talk about herself; and though she had quietly relinquished all her old activities, her room was still the centre it had long been for the London thinker and reformer.

Diana found there an infinity to learn. The sages and saints, it seemed, are of all sides and all opinions. That had not been the lesson of her youth. In a comforting heat of prejudice her father had found relief from suffering, and his creeds had been fused with her young blood. Lately she had seen their opposites embodied in a woman from whom she shrank in repulsion—whose name never passed her lips—Oliver's sister—who had trampled on her in her misery. Yet here, in Marion's dingy lodging, she saw the very same ideas which Isabel Fotheringham made hateful, clothed in light, speaking from the rugged or noble faces of men and women who saw in them the salvation of their kind.

The intellect in Diana, the critical instinct resisted. And, moreover, to have abandoned any fraction of the conservative and traditional beliefs in which she had been reared was impossible for her of all women; it would have seemed to her that she was thereby leaving those two suffering ones, whom only her love sheltered, still lonelier in death. So, beneath the clatter of talk and opinion, run the deep omnipotent tides of our real being.

But if the mind resisted, the heart felt, and therewith, the soul—that total personality which absorbs and transmutes the contradictions of life—grew kinder and gentler within her.

One day, after a discussion on votes for women which had taken place beside Marion's sofa, Diana, when the talkers were gone, had thrown herself on her friend.

"Dear, you can't wish it!—you can't believe it! To brutalize—unsex us!"

Marion raised herself on her elbow, and looked down the narrow cross street beneath the windows of her lodging. It was a stifling evening. The street was strewn with refuse, the odors from it filled the room. Ragged children with smeared faces were sitting or playing listlessly in the gutters. The public-house at the corner was full of animation, and women were passing in and out. Through the roar of traffic from the main street beyond a nearer sound persisted: a note of wailing—the wailing of babes.

"There are the unsexed!" said Marion, panting. "Is their brutalization the price we pay for our refinement?" Then, as she sank back: "Try anything—everything—to change that."

Diana pressed the speaker's hand to her lips.

But from Marion Vincent, the girl's thoughts, as she wandered in the summer garden, had passed on to the news which Mrs. Roughsedge had brought her. Oliver was speaking every night, almost, in the villages round Beechcote. Last week he had spoken at Beechcote itself. Since Mrs. Roughsedge's visit, Diana had borrowed the local paper from Brown, and had read two of Oliver's speeches therein reported. As she looked up to the downs, or caught through the nearer trees the lines of distant woods, it was as though the whole scene—earth and air—were once more haunted for her by Oliver—his presence—his voice. Beechcote lay on the high-road from Tallyn to Dunscombe, the chief town of the division. Several times a week, at least, he must pass the gate. At any moment they might meet face to face.

The sooner the better! Unless she abandoned Beechcote, they must learn to meet on the footing of ordinary acquaintances; and it were best done quickly.

Voices on the lawn! Diana, peeping through the trees, beheld the Vicar in conversation with Muriel Colwood. She turned and fled, pausing at last in the deepest covert of the wood, breathless and a little ashamed.

She had seen him once since her return. Everybody was so kind to her, the Vicar, the Miss Bertrams—everybody; only the pity and the kindness burned so. She wrestled with these feelings in the wood, but she none the less kept a thick screen between herself and Mr. Lavery.

She could never forget that night of her misery when—good man that he was!—he had brought her the message of his faith.

But the great melting moments of life are rare, and the tracts between are full of small frictions. What an incredible sermon he had preached on the preceding Sunday! That any minister of the national church—representing all sorts and conditions of men—should think it right to bring his party politics into the pulpit in that way! Unseemly! unpardonable!

Her dark eyes flashed—and then clouded. She had walked home from the sermon in a heat of wrath, had straightway sought out some blue ribbon, and made Tory rosettes for herself and her dog. Muriel had laughed—had been delighted to see her doing it.

But the rosettes were put away now—thrown into the bottom of a drawer. She would never wear them.

The Vicar, it seemed, was no friend of Oliver's—would not vote for him, and had been trying to induce the miners at Hartingfield to run a Labor man. On the other hand, she understood that the Ferrier party in the division were dissatisfied with him on quite other grounds: that they reproached him with a leaning to violent and extreme views, and with a far too lukewarm support of the leader of the party and the leader's policy. The local papers were full of grumbling letters to that effect.

Her brow knit over Oliver's difficulties. The day before, Mr. Lavery, meeting Muriel in the village street, had suggested that Miss Mallory might lend him the barn for a Socialist meeting—a meeting, in fact, for the harassing and heckling of Oliver.

Had he come now to urge the same plea again? A woman's politics were not, of course, worth remembering!

She moved on to a point where, still hidden, she could see the lawn. The Vicar was in full career; the harsh creaking voice came to her from the distance. What an awkward unhandsome figure, with his long, lank countenance, his large ears and spectacled eyes! Yet an apostle, she admitted, in his way—a whole-hearted, single-minded gentleman. But the barn he should not have.

She watched him depart, and then slowly emerged from her hiding-place. Muriel, putting loving hands on her shoulders, looked at her with eyes that mocked a little—tenderly.

"Yes, I know," said Diana—"I know. I shirked. Did he want the barn?"

"Oh no. I convinced him, the other day, you were past praying for."

"Was he shocked? 'It is a serious thing for women to throw themselves across the path of progress,'" said Diana, in a queer voice.

Muriel looked at her, puzzled. Diana reddened, and kissed her.

"What did he want, then?"

"He came to ask whether you would take the visiting of Fetter Lane—and a class in Sunday-school."

Diana gasped.

"What did you say?"

"Never mind. He went away quelled."

"No doubt he thought I ought to be glad to be set to work."

"Oh! they are all masterful—that sort."

Diana walked on.

"I suppose he gossiped about the election?"

"Yes. He has all sorts of stories—about the mines—and the Tallyn estates," said Muriel, unwillingly.

Diana's look flashed.

"Do you believe he has any power of collecting evidence fairly? I don't. He sees what he wants to see."

Mrs. Colwood agreed; but did not feel called upon to confirm Diana's view by illustrations. She kept Mr. Lavery's talk to herself.

Presently, as the evening fell, Diana sitting under the limes watching the shadows lengthen on the new-mown grass, wondered whether she had any mind—any opinions of her own at all. Her father; Oliver; Mr. Ferrier; Marion Vincent—she saw and felt with them all in turn. In the eyes of a Mrs. Fotheringham could anything be more despicable?

The sun was sinking when she stole out of the garden with some flowers and peaches for Betty Dyson. Her frequent visits to Betty's cottage were often the bright spots in her day. With her, almost alone among the poor people, Diana was conscious of no greedy curiosity behind the spoken words. Yet Betty was the living chronicle of the village, and what she did not know about its inhabitants was not worth knowing.

Diana found her white and suffering as usual, but so bubbling with news that she had no patience either with her own ailments or with the peaches. Waving both aside, she pounced imperiously upon her visitor, her queer yellowish eyes aglow with "eventful living."

"Did you hear of old Tom Murthly dropping dead in the medder last Thursday?"

Diana had just heard of the death of the eccentric old man who for fifty years—bachelor and miser—had inhabited a dilapidated house in the village.

"Well, he did. Yo may take it at that—yo may." (A mysterious phrase, equivalent, no doubt, to the masculine oath.) "'Ee 'ad a lot of money—Tom 'ad. Them two 'ouses was 'is what stands right be'ind Learoyds', down the village."

"Who will they go to now, Betty?"

Betty's round, shapeless countenance, furrowed and scarred by time, beamed with the joy of communication.

"Chancery!" she said, nodding. "Chancery'll 'ave 'em, in a twelvemonth's time from now, if Mrs. Jack Murthly's Tom—young Tom—don't claim 'em from South Africa—and the Lord knows where ee is!"

Diana tried to follow, held captive by a tyrannical pair of eyes.

"And what relation is Mrs. Jack Murthly to the man who died?"

"Brother's wife!" said Betty, sharply. "I thought you'd ha' known that."

"But if nothing is heard of the son, Betty—of young Tom—Mrs. Murthly's two daughters will have the cottages, won't they?"

Betty's scorn made her rattle her stick on the flagged floor.

"They ain't daughters!—they're only 'alves."

"Halves?" said Diana, bewildered.

"Jack Murthly worn't their father!" A fresh shower of nods. "Yo may take it at that!"

"Well, then, who—?"

Betty bent hastily forward—Diana had placed herself on a stool before her—and, thrusting out her wrinkled lips, said, in a hoarse whisper:

"Two fathers!"

There was a silence.

"I don't understand, Betty," said Diana, softly.

"Jack was 'is father, all right—Tom's in South Africa. But he worn't their father, Mrs. Jack bein' a widder—or said so. They're only 'alves—and 'alves ain't no good in law; so inter Chancery those 'ouses 'll go, come a twelvemonth—yo may take it at that!" Diana laughed—a young spontaneous laugh—the first since she had come home. She kept Betty gossiping for half an hour, and as the stream of the village life poured about her, in Betty's racy speech, it was as though some primitive virtue entered into her and cheered her—some bracing voice from the Earth-spirit—whose purpose is not missed

"If birth proceeds—if things subsist."

She rose at last, held Betty's hand tenderly, and went her way, conscious of a return of natural pleasure, such as Italy had never brought her, her heart opening afresh to England and the English life.

Perhaps she would find at home a letter from Mr. Ferrier—her dear, famous friend, who never forgot her, ignorant as she was of the great affairs in which he was plunged. But she meant to be ignorant no longer. No more brooding and dreaming! It was pleasant to remember that Sir James Chide had taken a furnished house—Lytchett Manor—only a few miles from Beechcote, and that Mr. Ferrier was to be his guest there as soon as politics allowed. For her, Diana, that was well, for if he were at Tallyn they could have met but seldom if at all.

She had made a round through a distant and sequestered lane in order to prolong her walk. Presently she came to a deep cutting in the chalk, where the road, embowered in wild roses and clematis, turned sharply at the foot of a hill. As she approached the turn she heard sounds—a man's voice. Her heart suddenly failed her. She looked to either side—no gate, no escape. Nothing for it but to go forward. She turned the corner.

Before her was a low pony carriage which Alicia Drake was driving. It was drawn up by the side of the road, and Alicia sat in it, laughing and talking, while Oliver Marsham gathered a bunch of wild roses from the road-side. As Diana appeared, and before either of them saw her, Marsham returned to the carriage, his hands full of flowers.

"Will that content you? I have torn myself to ribbons for you!"

"Oh, don't expect too much gratitude—Oliver!" The last word was low and hurried. Alicia gathered up the reins hastily, and Marsham looked round him—startled.

He saw a tall and slender girl coming toward them, accompanied by a Scotch collie. She bowed to him and to Alicia, and passed quickly on.

"Never mind any more roses," said Alicia. "We ought to get home."

They drove toward Tallyn in silence. Alicia's startling hat of white muslin framed the red gold of her hair, and the brilliant color—assisted here and there by rouge—of her cheeks and lips. She said presently, in a sympathetic voice:

"How sorry one is for her!"

Marsham made no reply. They passed into the darkness of overarching trees, and there, veiled from him in the green twilight, Alicia no longer checked the dancing triumph in her eyes.



CHAPTER XVIII

One Saturday in early August, some weeks after the incident described in the last chapter, Bobbie Forbes, in the worst inn's worst fly, such being the stress and famine of election time, drove up to the Tallyn front door. It was the day after the polling, and Tallyn, with its open windows and empty rooms, had the look of a hive from which the bees have swarmed. According to the butler, only Lady Niton was at home, and the household was eagerly awaiting news of the declaration of the poll at Dunscombe Town Hall. Lady Niton, indeed, was knitting in the drawing-room.

"Capital!—to find you alone," said Bobbie, taking a seat beside her. "All the others at Dunscombe, I hear. And no news yet?"

Lady Niton, who had given him one inky finger—(a pile of letters just completed lay beside her)—shook her head, looking him critically up and down the while.

The critical eye, however, was more required in her own case. She was untidily dressed, as usual, in a shabby black gown; her brown "front" was a little displaced, and her cap awry; and her fingers had apparently been badly worsted in a struggle with her pen. Yet her diminutive figure in the drawing-room—such is the power of personality—made a social place of it at once.

"I obeyed your summons," Bobbie continued, "though I'm sure Lady Lucy didn't want to invite me with all this hubbub going on. Well, what do you prophesy? They told me at the station that the result would be out by two o'clock. I very nearly went to the Town Hall, but the fact is everybody's so nervous I funked it. If Oliver's kicked out, the fewer tears over spilled milk the better."

"He won't be kicked out."

"Don't make too sure! I have been hearing the most dismal reports. The Ferrierites hate him much worse than if he'd gone against them openly. And the fellows he really agrees with don't love him much better."

"All the same he will get in; and if he don't get office now he will in a few years."

"Oliver must be flattered that you believe in him so."

"I don't believe in him at all," said Lady Niton, sharply. "Every country has the politicians it deserves."

Bobbie grinned.

"I don't find you a democrat yet."

"I'm just as much of one as anybody in this house, for all their fine talk. Only they pretend to like being governed by their plumbers and gas-fitters, and I don't."

"I hear that Oliver's speeches have been extremely good."

"H'm—all about the poor," said Lady Niton, releasing her hand from the knitting-needles, and waving it scornfully at the room in which they sat. "Well, if Oliver were to tell me from now till doomsday that his heart bled for the poor, I shouldn't believe him. It doesn't bleed. He is as comfortable in his middle region as you or I."

Bobbie laughed.

"Now look here, I'm simply famished for gossip, and I must have it." Lady Niton's ball of wool fell on the floor. Bobbie pounced upon it, and put it in his pocket. "A hostage! Surrender—and talk to me! Do you belong to the Mallory faction—or don't you?"

"Give me my ball, sir—and don't dare to mention that girl's name in this house."

Bobbie opened his eyes.

"I say!—what did you mean by writing to me like that if you weren't on the right side?"

"What do you mean?"

"You can't have gone over to Lady Lucy and the Fotheringham woman!"

Lady Niton looked at him with a queer expression of contempt in her tanned and crumpled face.

"Is that the only reason you can imagine for my not permitting you to talk of Diana Mallory in this house?"

Bobbie, looked puzzled. Then a light broke.

"I see! You mean the house isn't good enough? Precisely! What's up. Alicia? No!"

Lady Niton laughed.

"He has been practically engaged to her for two years. He didn't know it, of course—he hadn't an idea of it. But Alicia knew it. Oh! she allowed him his amusements. The Mallory girl was one of them. If the Sparling story hadn't broken it off, something else would. I don't believe Alicia ever alarmed herself."

"Are they engaged?"

"Not formally. I dare say it won't be announced till the autumn," said his companion, indifferently. Then seeing that Bobbie's attention was diverted, she made a dash with one skinny hand at his coat-pocket, abstracted the ball of wool, and triumphantly returned to her knitting.

"Mean!" said Bobbie. "You caught me off guard. Well, I wish them joy. Of course, I've always liked Marsham, and I'm very sorry he's got himself into such a mess. But as for Alicia, there's no love lost between us. I hear Miss Mallory's at Beechcote."

Lady Niton replied that she had only been three days in the house, that she had asked—ostentatiously—for a carriage the day before to take her to call at Beechcote, and had been refused. Everything, it seemed, was wanted for election purposes. But she understood that Miss Mallory was quite well and not breaking her heart at all. At the present moment she was the most popular person in Brookshire, and would be the most petted, if she would allow it. But she and Mrs. Colwood lived a very quiet life, and were never to be seen at the tea and garden parties in which the neighborhood abounded.

"Plucky of her to come back here!" said Bobbie. "And how's Lady Lucy?"

Lady Niton moved impatiently.

"Lucy would be all right if her son wouldn't join a set of traitors in jockeying the man who put him into Parliament, and has been Lucy's quasi-husband for twenty years!"

"Oh, you think he is in the plot?"

"Of course, Lucy swears he isn't. But if not—why isn't Ferrier here? His own election was over a week ago. In the natural course of things he would have been staying here since then, and speaking for Oliver. Not a word of it! I'm glad he's shown a little spirit at last! He's put up with it about enough."

"And Lady Lucy's fretting?"

"She don't like it—particularly when he comes to stay with Sir James Chide and not at Tallyn. Such a thing has never happened before."

"Poor old Ferrier!" said Bobbie, with a shrug of the shoulders.

Lady Niton drew herself up fiercely.

"Don't pity your betters, sir! It's disrespectful."

Bobbie smiled. "You know the Ministry's resigned?"

"About time! What have they been hanging on for so long?"

"Well, it's done at last. I found a wire from the club waiting for me here. The Queen has sent for Broadstone, and the fat's all in the fire."

The two fell into an excited discussion of the situation. The two rival heroes of the electoral six weeks on the Liberal side had been, of course, Ferrier and Lord Philip. Lord Philip had conducted an astonishing campaign in the Midlands, through a series of speeches of almost revolutionary violence, containing many veiled, or scarcely veiled, attacks on Ferrier. Ferrier, on the whole held the North; but the candidates in the Midlands had been greatly affected by Lord Philip and Lord Philip's speeches, and a contagious enthusiasm had spread through whole districts, carrying in the Liberal candidates with a rush. In the West and South, too, where the Darcy family had many friends and large estates, the Liberal nominees had shown a strong tendency to adopt Lord Philip's programme and profess enthusiastic admiration for its author. So that there were now two kings of Brentford. Lord Philip's fortunes had risen to a threatening height, and the whole interest of the Cabinet-making just beginning lay in the contest which it inevitably implied between Ferrier and his new but formidable lieutenant. It was said that Lord Philip had retired to his tent—alias, his Northamptonshire house—and did not mean to budge thence till he had got all he wanted out of the veteran Premier.

"As for the papers," said Bobbie, "you see they're already at it hammer and tongs. However, so long as the Herald sticks to Ferrier, he has very much the best of it. This new editor Barrington is an awfully clever fellow."

"Barrington!—Barrington!" said Lady Niton, looking up, "That's the man who's coming to-night."

"Coming here?—Barrington? Hullo, I wonder what's up?"

"He proposed himself, Oliver says; he's an old friend."

"They were at Trinity together. But he doesn't really care much about Oliver. I'm certain he's not coming here for Oliver's beaux yeux, or Lady Lucy's."

"What does it matter?" cried Lady Niton, disdainfully.

"H'm!—you think 'em all a poor lot?"

"Well, when you've known Dizzy and Peel, Palmerston and Melbourne, you're not going to stay awake nights worriting about John Ferrier. In any other house but this I should back Lord Philip. But I like to make Oliver uncomfortable."

"Upon my word! I have heard you say that Lord Philip's speeches were abominable."

"So they are. But he ought to have credit for the number of 'em he can turn out in a week."

"He'll be heard, in fact, for his much speaking?"

Bobbie looked at his companion with a smile. Suddenly his cheek flushed. He sat down beside her and tried to take her hand.

"Look here," he said, with vivacity, "I think you were an awful brick to stick up for Miss Mallory as you did."

Lady Niton withdrew her hand.

"I haven't an idea what you're driving at."

"You really thought that Oliver should have given up all that money?"

His companion looked at him rather puzzled.

"He wouldn't have been a pauper," she said, dryly; "the girl had some."

"Oh, but not much. No!—you took a dear, unworldly generous view of it!—a view which has encouraged me immensely!"

"You!" Lady Niton drew back, and drew up, as though scenting battle, while her wig and cap slipped more astray.

"Yes—me. It's made me think—well, that I ought to have told you a secret of mine weeks ago."

And with a resolute and combative air, Bobbie suddenly unburdened himself of the story of his engagement—to a clergyman's daughter, without a farthing, his distant cousin on his mother's side, and quite unknown to Lady Niton.

His listener emitted a few stifled cries—asked a few furious questions—and then sat rigid.

"Well?" said Bobbie, masking his real anxiety under a smiling appearance.

With a great effort, Lady Niton composed herself. She stretched out a claw and resumed her work, two red spots on her cheeks.

"Marry her, if you like," she said, with delusive calm. "I sha'n't ever speak to you again. A scheming minx without a penny!—that ought never to have been allowed out of the school-room."

Bobbie leaped from his chair.

"Is that the way you mean to take it?"

Lady Niton nodded.

"That is the way I mean to take it!"

"What a fool I was to believe your fine speeches about Oliver!"

"Oliver may go to the devil!" cried Lady Niton.

"Very well!" Bobbie's dignity was tremendous. "Then I don't mean to be allowed less liberty than Oliver. It's no good continuing this conversation. Why, I declare! some fool has been meddling with those books!"

And rapidly crossing the floor, swelling with wrath and determination, Bobbie opened the bookcase of first editions which stood in this inner drawing-room and began to replace some volumes, which had strayed from their proper shelves, with a deliberate hand.

"You resemble Oliver in one thing!" Lady Niton threw after him.

"What may that be?" he said, carelessly.

"You both find gratitude inconvenient!"

Bobbie turned and bowed. "I do!" he said, "inconvenient, and intolerable! Hullo!—I hear the carriage. I beg you to remark that what I told you was confidential. It is not to be repeated in company."

Lady Niton had only time to give him a fierce look when the door opened, and Lady Lucy came wearily in.

Bobbie hastened to meet her.

"My dear Lady Lucy!—what news?"

"Oliver is in!"

"Hurrah!" Bobbie shook her hand vehemently. "I am glad!"

Lady Niton, controlling herself with difficulty, rose from her seat, and also offered a hand.

"There, you see, Lucy, you needn't have been so anxious."

Lady Lucy sank into a chair.

"What's the majority?" said Bobbie, astonished by her appearance and manner. "I say, you know, you've been working too hard."

"The majority is twenty-four," said Lady Lucy, coldly, as though she had rather not have been asked the question; and at the same time, leaning heavily back in her chair, she began feebly to untie the lace strings of her bonnet. Bobbie was shocked by her appearance. She had aged rapidly since he had last seen her, and, in particular, a gray shadow had overspread the pink-and-white complexion which had so long preserved her good looks.

On hearing the figures (the majority five years before had been fifteen hundred), Bobbie could not forbear an exclamation which produced another contraction of Lady Lucy's tired brow. Lady Niton gave a very audible "Whew!"—to which she hastened to add: "Well, Lucy, what does it matter? Twenty-four is as good as two thousand."

Lady Lucy roused herself a little.

"Of course," she said, languidly, "it is disappointing. But we may be glad it is no worse. For a little while, during the counting, we thought Oliver was out. But the last bundles to be counted were all for him, and we just saved it." A pause, and then the speaker added, with emphasis: "It has been a horrid election! Such ill-feeling—and violence—such unfair placards!—some of them, I am sure, were libellous. But I am told one can do nothing."

"Well, my dear, this is what Democracy comes to," said Lady Niton, taking up her knitting again with vehemence. "'Tu l'as voulu, Georges Dandin.' You Liberals have opened the gates—and now you grumble at the deluge."

"It has been the injustice shown him by his own side that Oliver minds." The speaker's voice betrayed the bleeding of the inward wound. "Really, to hear some of our neighbors talk, you would think him a Communist. And, on the other hand, he and Alicia only just escaped being badly hurt this morning at the collieries—when they were driving round. I implored them not to go. However, they would. There was an ugly crowd, and but for a few mounted police that came up, it might have been most unpleasant."

"I suppose Alicia has been careering about with him all day?" said Lady Niton.

"Alicia—and Roland Lankester—and the chairman of Oliver's committee. Now they've gone off on the coach, to drive round some of the villages, and thank people." Lady Lucy rose as she spoke.

"Not much to thank for, according to you!" observed Lady Niton, grimly.

"Oh, well, he's in!" Lady Lucy drew a long breath. "But people have behaved so extraordinarily! That man—that clergyman—at Beechcote—Mr. Lavery. He's been working night and day against Oliver. Really, I think parsons ought to leave politics alone."

"Lavery?" said Bobbie. "I thought he was a Radical. Weren't Oliver's speeches advanced enough to please him?"

"He has been denouncing Oliver as a humbug, because of what he is pleased to call the state of the mining villages. I'm sure they're a great, great deal better than they were twenty years ago!" Lady Lucy's voice was almost piteous. "However, he very nearly persuaded the miners to run a candidate of their own, and when that fell through, he advised them to abstain from voting. And they must have done so—in several villages. That's pulled down the majority."

"Abominable!" said Bobbie, who was comfortably conservative. "I always said that man was a firebrand."

"I don't know what he expects to get by it," said Lady Lucy, slowly, as she moved toward the door. Her tone was curiously helpless; she was still stately, but it was a ghostly and pallid stateliness.

"Get by it!" sneered Lady Niton. "After all, his friends are in. They say he's eloquent. His jackasseries will get him a bishopric in time—you'll see."

"It was the unkindness—the ill-feeling—I minded," said Lady Lucy, in a low voice, leaning heavily upon her stick, and looking straight before her as though she inwardly recalled some of the incidents of the election. "I never knew anything like it before."

Lady Niton lifted her eyebrows—not finding a suitable response. Did Lucy really not understand what was the matter?—that her beloved Oliver had earned the reputation throughout the division of a man who can propose to a charming girl, and then desert her for money, at the moment when the tragic blow of her life had fallen upon her?—and she, that of the mercenary mother who had forced him into it. Precious lucky for Oliver to have got in at all!

The door closed on Lady Lucy. Forgetting for an instant what had happened before her hostess entered, Elizabeth Niton, bristling with remarks, turned impetuously toward Forbes. He had gone back to first editions, and was whistling vigorously as he worked. With a start, Lady Niton recollected herself. Her face reddened afresh; she rose, walked with as much majesty as her station admitted to the door, which she closed sharply behind her.

As soon as she was gone Bobbie stopped whistling. If she was really going to make a quarrel of it, it would certainly be a great bore—a hideous bore. His conscience pricked him for the mean and unmanly dependence which had given the capricious and masterful little woman so much to say in his affairs. He must really find fresh work, pay his debts, those to Lady Niton first and foremost, and marry the girl who would make a decent fellow of him. But his heart smote him about his queer old Fairy Blackstick. No surrender!—but he would like to make peace.

* * * * *

It was past eight o'clock when the four-in-hand on which the new member had been touring the constituency drove up to the Tallyn door. Forbes hurried to the steps to greet the party.

"Hullo, Oliver! A thousand congratulations, old fellow! Never mind the figures. A win's a win! But I thought you would have been dining and junketing in Dunscombe to-night. How on earth did you get them to let you off?"

Oliver's tired countenance smiled perfunctorily as he swung himself down from the coach. He allowed his hand to be shaken; his lips moved, but only a husky whisper emerged.

"Lost his voice," Roland Lankester explained. "And so done that we begged him off from the Dunscombe dinner. He's only fit for bed."

And with a wave of the hand to the company, Marsham, weary and worn, mounted the steps, and, passing rapidly through the hall, went up-stairs. Alicia Drake and Lankester followed, pausing in the hall to talk with Bobbie.

Alicia too looked tired out. She was dressed in a marvellous gown of white chiffon, adorned with a large rosette of Marsham's colors—red-and-yellow—and wore a hat entirely composed of red and yellow roses. The colors were not becoming to her, and she had no air of happy triumph. Rather, both in her and in Marsham there were strong signs of suppressed chagrin and indignation.

"Well, that's over!" said Miss Drake, throwing down her gloves on the billiard-table with a fierce gesture; "and I'm sure neither Oliver nor I would go through it again for a million of money. How revolting the lower classes are!"

Lankester looked at her curiously.

"You've worked awfully hard," he said. "I hope you're going to have a good rest."

"I wouldn't bother about rest if I could pay out some of the people here," said Alicia, passionately. "I should like to see a few score of them hanged in chains, pour encourager les autres."

So saying, she gathered up her gloves and parasol, and swept up-stairs declaring that she was too dog-tired to talk.

Bobbie Forbes and Lankester looked at each other.

"It's been really a beastly business!" said Lankester, under his breath. "Precious little politics in it, too, as far as I could see. The strong Ferrierites no doubt have held aloof on the score of Marsham's supposed disloyalty to the great man; though, as far as I can make out, he has been careful not to go beyond a certain line in his speeches. Anyway, they have done no work, and a good many of them have certainly abstained from voting. It is our vote that has gone down; the Tories have scarcely increased theirs at all. But the other side—and the Socialists—got hold of a lot of nasty little things about the estate and the collieries. The collieries are practically in rebellion, spoiling for a big strike next November, if not before. When Miss Drake and Marsham drove round there this morning they were very badly received. Her parasol was broken by a stone, and there was a good deal of mud-throwing."

Bobbie eyed his companion.

"Was any of the Opposition personal to her?"

Lankester nodded.

"There's an extraordinary feeling all over the place for—"

"Of course there is!" said Bobbie, hotly. "Marsham isn't such a fool as not to know that. Why did he let this aggressive young woman take such a prominent part?"

Lankester shrugged his shoulders, but did not pursue the subject. The two men went up-stairs, and Lankester parted from his companion with the remark:

"I must say I hope Marsham won't press for anything in the Government. I don't believe he'll ever get in for this place again."

Forbes shook his head.

"Marsham's got a lot of devil in him somewhere. I shouldn't wonder if this made him set his teeth."

* * * * *

Lankester opened the door of the ugly yet luxurious room which had been assigned him. He looked round it with fresh distaste, resenting its unnecessary size and its pretentious decoration, resenting also the very careful valeting which had evidently been bestowed on his shabby clothes and personal appointments, as though the magnificent young footman who looked after him had been doing his painful best with impossible materials.

"Why, the idiots have shut the windows!"

He strode vehemently across the floor, only to find the park outside, as he hung across the sill, even less to his liking than the room within.

Then, throwing himself into a chair, tired out with the canvassing, speaking, and multifarious business of the preceding days, he fell to wondering what on earth had made him—after the fatigues of his own election—come down to help Marsham with his. There were scores of men in the House he liked a great deal better, and requests for help had been showered upon him.

He had, no doubt, been anxious, as a keen member of the advanced group, that Marsham should finally commit himself to the programme of the Left Wing, with which he had been so long coquetting. Oliver had a considerable position in the House, and was, moreover, a rich man. Rich men had not, so far, been common in the advanced section of the party. Lankester, in whom the idealist and the wire-puller were shrewdly mixed, was well aware that the reforms he desired could only be got by extensive organization; and he knew precisely what the money cost of getting them would be. Rich men, therefore, were the indispensable tools of his ideas; and among his own group he who had never possessed a farthing of his own apart from the earnings of his brain and pen was generally set on to capture them.

Was that really why he had come down?—to make sure of this rich Laodicean? Lankester fell into a reverie.

He was a man of curious gifts and double personality. It was generally impossible to lure him, on any pretext, from the East End and the House of Commons. He lived in a block of model dwellings in a street opening out of the East India Dock Road, and his rooms, whenever he was at home, were overrun by children from the neighboring tenements. To them he was all gentleness and fun, while his command of invective in a public meeting was little short of terrible. Great ladies and the country-houses courted him because of a certain wit, a certain charm—above all, a certain spiritual power—which piqued the worldling. He flouted and refused the great ladies—with a smile, however, which gave no offence; and he knew, notwithstanding, everybody whom he wanted to know. Occasionally he made quiet spaces in his life, and disappeared from London for days or weeks. When he reappeared it was often with a battered and exhausted air, as of one from whom virtue had gone out. He was, in truth, a mystic of a secular kind: very difficult to class religiously, though he called himself a member of the Society of Friends. Lady Lucy, who was of Quaker extraction, recognized in his ways and phrases echoes from the meetings and influences of her youth. But, in reality, he was self-taught and self-formed, on the lines of an Evangelical tradition, which had owed something, a couple of generations back, among his Danish forebears, to the influence of Emanuel Swedenborg. This tradition had not only been conveyed to him by a beloved and saintly mother; it had been appropriated by the man's inmost forces. What he believed in, with all mystics, was prayer—an intimate and ineffable communion between the heart and God. Lying half asleep on the House of Commons benches, or strolling on the Terrace, he pursued often an inner existence, from which he could spring in a moment to full mundane life—arguing passionately for some Socialist proposal, scathing an opponent, or laughing and "ragging" with a group of friends, like a school-boy on an exeat. But whatever he did, an atmosphere went with him that made him beloved. He was extremely poor, and wrote for his living. His opinions won the scorn of moderate men; and every year his influence in Parliament—on both sides of the House and with the Labor party—increased. On his rare appearance in such houses as Tallyn Hall every servant in the house marked and befriended him. The tall footman, for instance, who had just been endeavoring to make the threadbare cuffs of Lankester's dress coat present a more decent appearance, had done it in no spirit of patronage, but simply in order that a gentleman who spoke to him as a man and a brother should not go at a disadvantage among "toffs" who did nothing of the kind.

But again—why had he come down?

During the last months of Parliament, Lankester had seen a good deal of Oliver. The story of Diana, and of Marsham's interrupted wooing was by that time public property, probably owing to the indignation of certain persons in Brookshire. As we have seen, it had injured the prestige of the man concerned in and out of Parliament. But Lankester, who looked at life intimately and intensely, with the eye of a confessor, had been roused by it to a curiosity about Oliver Marsham—whom at the time he was meeting habitually on political affairs—which he had never felt before. He, with his brooding second sight based on a spiritual estimate of the world—he and Lady Lucy—alone saw that Marsham was unhappy. His irritable moodiness might, of course, have nothing to do with his failure to play the man in the case of Miss Mallory. Lankester was inclined to think it had—Alicia Drake or no Alicia Drake. And the grace of repentance is so rare in mankind that the mystic—his own secret life wavering perpetually between repentance and ecstasy—is drawn to the merest shadow of it.

These hidden thoughts on Lankester's side had been met by a new and tacit friendliness on Marsham's. He had shown an increasing liking for Lankester's company, and had finally asked him to come down and help him in his constituency.

By George, if he married that girl, he would pay his penalty to the utmost!

Lankester leaned out of window again, his eyes sweeping the dreary park. In reality they had before them Marsham's aspect at the declaration of the poll—head and face thrown back defiantly, hollow eyes of bitterness and fatigue; and the scene outside—in front, a booing crowd—and beside the new member, Alicia's angry and insolent look.

The election represented a set-back in a man's career, in spite of the bare victory. And Lankester did not think it would be retrieved. With a prophetic insight which seldom failed him, he saw that Marsham's chapter of success was closed. He might get some small office out of the Government. Nevertheless, the scale of life had dropped—on the wrong side. Through Lankester's thought there shot a pang of sympathy. Defeat was always more winning to him than triumph.

* * * * *

Meanwhile the new member himself was in no melting mood.

Forbes was right. Marsham, in his room, looking over the letters which his servant had brought him, was only conscious of two feelings—disgust and loathing with regard to the contest just over, and a dogged determination with regard to the future. He had been deserted by the moderates—by the Ferrierites—in spite of all his endeavors to keep within courteous and judicial bounds; and he had been all but sacrificed to a forbearance which had not saved him apparently a single moderate vote, and had lost him scores on the advanced side.

With regard to Ferrier personally, he was extremely sore, A letter from him during the preceding week would certainly have influenced votes. Marsham denied hotly that his speeches had been of a character to offend or injure his old friend and leader. A man must really be allowed some honest latitude of opinion, even under party government!—and in circumstances of personal obligation. He had had to steer a most difficult course. But why must he give up his principles—not to speak of his chances of political advancement—because John Ferrier had originally procured him his seat in Parliament, and had been his parents' intimate friend for many years? Let the Whig deserters answer that question, if they could!

His whole being was tingling with anger and resentment. The contest had steeped him in humiliations which stuck to him like mud-stains.

The week before, he had written to Ferrier, imploring him if possible to come and speak for him—or at least to write a letter; humbling his pride; and giving elaborate explanations of the line which he had taken.

There, on the table beside him, was Ferrier's reply:

"My Dear Oliver,—I don't think a letter would do you much good, and for a speech, I am too tired—and I am afraid at the present moment too thin-skinned. Pray excuse me. We shall meet when this hubbub is over. All success to you.

"Yours ever, J.F."

Was there ever a more ungracious, a more uncalled-for, letter? Well, at any rate, he was free henceforward to think and act for himself, and on public grounds only; though of course he would do nothing unworthy of an old friendship, or calculated to hurt his mother's feelings. Ferrier, by this letter, and by the strong negative influence he must have exerted in West Brookshire during the election, had himself loosened the old bond; and Marsham would henceforth stand on his own feet.

As to Ferrier's reasons for a course of action so wholly unlike any he had ever yet taken in the case of Lucy Marsham's son, Oliver's thoughts found themselves engaged in a sore and perpetual wrangle. Ferrier, he supposed, suspected him of a lack of "straightness"; and did not care to maintain an intimate relation, which had been already, and might be again, used against him. Marsham, on his side, recalled with discomfort various small incidents in the House of Commons which might have seemed—to an enemy—to illustrate or confirm such an explanation of the state of things.

Absurd, of course! He was an old friend of Ferrier's, whose relation to his mother necessarily involved close and frequent contact with her son. And at the same time—although in the past Ferrier had no doubt laid him under great personal and political obligations—he had by now, in the natural course of things, developed strong opinions of his own, especially as to the conduct of party affairs in the House of Commons; opinions which were not Ferrier's—which were, indeed, vehemently opposed to Ferrier's. In his, Oliver's, opinion, Ferrier's lead in the House—on certain questions—was a lead of weakness, making for disaster. Was he not even to hold, much less to express such a view, because of the quasi-parental relation in which Ferrier had once stood to him? The whole thing was an odious confusion—most unfair to him individually—between personal and Parliamentary duty.

Frankness?—loyalty? It would, no doubt, be said that Ferrier had always behaved with singular generosity both toward opponents and toward dissidents in his own party. Open and serious argument was at no time unwelcome to him.

All very well! But how was one to argue, beyond a certain point, with a man twenty-five years your senior, who had known you in jackets, and was also your political chief?

Moreover, he had argued—to the best of his ability. Ferrier had written him a striking series of letters, no doubt, and he had replied to them. As to Ferrier's wish that he should communicate certain points in those letters to Barton and Lankester, he had done it, to some extent. But it was a most useless proceeding. The arguments employed had been considered and rejected a hundred times already by every member of the dissident group.

And with regard to the meeting, which had apparently roused so sharp a resentment in Ferrier, Marsham maintained simply that he was not responsible. It was a meeting of the advanced Radicals of the division. Neither Marsham nor his agents had been present. Certain remarks and opinions of his own had been quoted indeed, even in public, as leading up to it, and justifying it. A great mistake. He had never meant to countenance any personal attack on Ferrier or his leadership. Yet he uncomfortably admitted that the meeting had told badly on the election. In the view of one side, he had not had pluck enough to go to it; in the view of the other, he had disgracefully connived at it.

* * * * *

The arrival of the evening post and papers did something to brush away these dismal self-communings. Wonderful news from the counties! The success of the latest batch of advanced candidates had been astonishing. Other men, it seemed, had been free to liberate their souls! Well, now the arbiter of the situation was Lord Philip, and there would certainly be a strong advanced infusion in the new Ministry. Marsham considered that he had as good claims as any of the younger men; and if it came to another election in Brookshire, hateful as the prospect was, he should be fighting in the open, and choosing his own weapons. No shirking! His whole being gathered itself into a passionate determination to retaliate upon the persons who had injured, thwarted, and calumniated him during the contest just over. He would fight again—next week, if necessary—and he would win!

As to the particular and personal calumnies with which he had been assailed—why, of course, he absolved Diana. She could have had no hand in them.

Suddenly he pushed his papers from him with a hasty unconscious movement.

In driving home that evening past the gates and plantations of Beechcote it seemed to him that he had seen through the trees—in the distance—the fluttering of a white dress. Had the news of his inglorious success just reached her? How had she received it? Her face came before him—the frank eyes—the sweet troubled look.

He dropped his head upon his arms. A sick distaste for all that he had been doing and thinking rose upon him, wavelike, drowning for a moment the energies of mind and will. Had anything been worth while—for him—since the day when he had failed to keep the last tryst which Diana had offered him?

He did not, however, long allow himself a weakness which he knew well he had no right to indulge. He roused himself abruptly, took pen and paper, and wrote a little note to Alicia, sending it round to her through her maid.

* * * * *

Marsham pleaded fatigue, and dined in his room. In the course of the meal he inquired of his servant if Mr. Barrington had arrived.

"Yes, sir; he arrived in time for dinner."

"Ask him to come up afterward and see me here."

As he awaited the new-comer, Marsham had time to ponder what this visit of a self-invited guest might mean. The support of the Herald and its brilliant editor had been so far one of Ferrier's chief assets. But there had been some signs of wavering in its columns lately, especially on two important questions likely to occupy the new Ministry in its first session—matters on which the opinion of the Darcy, or advanced section, was understood to be in violent conflict with that of Ferrier and the senior members of the late Front Opposition Bench in general.

Barrington, no doubt, wished to pump him—one of Ferrier's intimates—with regard to the latest phase of Ferrier's views on these two principal measures. The leader himself was rather stiff and old-fashioned with regard to journalists—gave too little information where other men gave too much.

Oliver glanced in some disquiet at the pile of Ferrier's letters lying beside him. It contained material for which any ambitious journalist, at the present juncture, would give the eyes out of his head. But could Barrington be trusted? Oliver vaguely remembered some stories to his disadvantage, told probably by Lankester, who in these respects was one of the most scrupulous of men. Yet the paper stood high, and was certainly written with conspicuous ability.

Why not give him information?—cautiously, of course, and with discretion. What harm could it do—to Ferrier or any one else? The party was torn by dissensions; and the first and most necessary step toward reunion was that Ferrier's aims and methods should be thoroughly understood. No doubt in these letters, as he had himself pointed out, he had expressed himself with complete, even dangerous freedom. But there was not going to be any question of putting them into Barrington's hands. Certainly not!—merely a quotation—a reference here and there.

As he began to sketch his own share in the expected conversation, a pleasant feeling of self-importance crept in, soothing to the wounds of the preceding week. Secretly Marsham knew that he had never yet made the mark in politics that he had hoped to make, that his abilities entitled him to make. The more he thought of it the more he realized that the coming half-hour might be of great significance in English politics; he had it in his own power to make it so. He was conscious of a strong wish to impress Barrington—perhaps Ferrier also. After all, a man grows up, and does not remain an Eton boy, or an undergraduate, forever. It would be well to make Ferrier more aware than he was of that fact.

In the midst of his thoughts the door opened, and Barrington—a man showing in his dark-skinned, large-featured alertness the signs of Jewish pliancy and intelligence—walked in.

"Are you up to conversation?" he said, laughing. "You look pretty done!"

"If I can whisper you what you want," said Oliver, huskily, "it's at your service! There are the cigarettes."

The talk lasted long. Midnight was near before the two men separated.

* * * * *

The news of Marsham's election reached Ferrier under Sir James Chide's roof, in the pleasant furnished house about four miles from Beechcote, of which he had lately become the tenant in order to be near Diana. It was conveyed in a letter from Lady Lucy, of which the conclusion ran as follows:

"It is so strange not to have you here this evening—not to be able to talk over with you all these anxieties and trials. I can't help being a little angry with Sir James. We are the oldest friends.

"Of course I have often been anxious lately lest Oliver should have done anything to offend you. I have spoken to him about that tiresome meeting, and I think I could prove to you it was not his fault. Do, my dear friend, come here as soon as you can, and let me explain to you whatever may have seemed wrong. You cannot think how much we miss you. I feel it a little hard that there should be strangers here this evening—like Mr. Lankester and Mr. Barrington. But it could not be helped. Mr. Lankester was speaking for Oliver last night—and Mr. Barrington invited himself. I really don't know why. Oliver is dreadfully tired—and so am I. The ingratitude and ill-feeling of many of our neighbors has tried me sorely. It will be a long time before I forget it. It really seems as though nothing were worth striving for in this very difficult world."

"Poor Lucy!" said Ferrier to himself, his heart softening, as usual. "Barrington? H'm. That's odd." He had only time for a short reply:

"My dear Lady Lucy,—It's horrid that you are tired and depressed. I wish I could come and cheer you up. Politics are a cursed trade. But never mind, Oliver is safely in, and as soon as the Government is formed, I will come to Tallyn, and we will laugh at these woes. I can't write at greater length now, for Broadstone has just summoned me. You will have seen that he went to Windsor this morning. Now the agony begins. Let's hope it may be decently short. I am just off for town.

"Yours ever, John Ferrier."

Two days passed—three days—and still the "agony" lasted. Lord Broadstone's house in Portman Square was besieged all day by anxious journalists watching the goings and comings of a Cabinet in the making. But nothing could be communicated to the newspapers—nothing, in fact, was settled. Envoys went backward and forward to Lord Philip in Northamptonshire. Urgent telegrams invited him to London. He took no notice of the telegrams; he did not invite the envoys, and when they came he had little or nothing of interest to say to them. Lord Broadstone, he declared, was fully in possession of his views. He had nothing more to add. And, indeed, a short note from him laid by in the new Premier's pocket-book was, if the truth were known, the fons et origo of all Lord Broadstone's difficulties.

Meanwhile the more conservative section exerted itself, and by the evening of the third day it seemed to have triumphed. A rumor spread abroad that Lord Philip had gone too far. Ferrier emerged from a long colloquy with the Prime Minister, walking briskly across the square with his secretary, smiling at some of the reporters in waiting. Twenty minutes later, as he stood in the smoking-room of the Reform, surrounded by a few privileged friends, Lankester passed through the room.

"By Jove," he said to a friend with him, "I believe Ferrier's done the trick!"

* * * * *

In spite, however, of a contented mind, Ferrier was aware, on reaching his own house, that he was far from well. There was nothing very much to account for his feeling of illness. A slight pain across the chest, a slight feeling of faintness, when he came to count up his symptoms; nothing else appeared. It was a glorious summer evening. He determined to go back to Chide, who now always returned to Lytchett by an evening train, after a working-day in town. Accordingly, the new Chancellor of the Exchequer and Leader of the House dined lightly, and went off to St. Pancras, leaving a note for the Prime Minister to say where he was to be found, and promising to come to town again the following afternoon.

* * * * *

The following morning fulfilled the promise of the tranquil evening and starry night, which, amid the deep quiet of the country, had done much to refresh a man, in whom, indeed, a stimulating consciousness of success seemed already to have repaired the ravages of the fight.

Ferrier was always an early riser, and by nine o'clock he and Sir James were pottering and smoking in the garden. A long case in which Chide had been engaged had come to an end the preceding day. The great lawyer sent word to his chambers that he was not coming up to town; Ferrier ascertained that he was only half an hour from a telegraph office, made a special arrangement with the local post as to a mid-day delivery of letters, and then gave himself up for the morning to rest, gossip, and a walk.

By a tiresome contretemps the newspapers did not arrive at breakfast-time. Sir James was but a new-comer in the district, and the parcel of papers due to him had gone astray through the stupidity of a newsboy. A servant was sent into Dunscombe, five miles off; and meanwhile Ferrier bore the blunder with equanimity. His letters of the morning, fresh from the heart of things, made newspapers a mere superfluity. They could tell him nothing that he did not know already. And as for opinions, those might wait.

He proposed, indeed, before the return of the servant from Dunscombe, to walk over to Beechcote. The road lay through woods, two miles of shade. He pined for exercise; Diana and her young sympathy acted as a magnet both on him and on Sir James; and it was to be presumed she took a daily paper, being, as Ferrier recalled, "a terrible little Tory."

In less than an hour they were at Beechcote. They found Diana and Mrs. Colwood on the lawn of the old house, reading and working in the shade of a yew hedge planted by that Topham Beauclerk who was a friend of Johnson. The scent of roses and limes; the hum of bees; the beauty of slow-sailing clouds, and of the shadows they flung on the mellowed color of the house; combined with the figure of Diana in white, her eager eyes, her smile, and her unquenchable interest in all that concerned the two friends, of whose devotion to her she was so gratefully and simply proud—these things put the last touch to Ferrier's enjoyment. He flung himself on the grass, talking to both the ladies of the incidents and absurdities of Cabinet-making, with a freedom and fun, an abandonment of anxiety and care that made him young again. Nobody mentioned a newspaper.