ong, 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.