to him, "_Vous devriez
bien nous la laisser_."

"She _has_ something then----?"

"She has most things. She'll go far. It's the first time in my life of
my beginning with a mistake. But don't tell her so. I don't flatter her.
She'll be too puffed up."

"Is she very conceited?" Sherringham asked.

"_Mauvais sujet!_" said Madame Carre.

It was on the journey to London that he indulged in some of those
questionings of his state that I have mentioned; but I must add that by
the time he reached Charing Cross--he smoked a cigar deferred till after
the Channel in a compartment by himself--it had suddenly come over him
that they were futile. Now that he had left the girl a subversive,
unpremeditated heart-beat told him--it made him hold his breath a minute
in the carriage--that he had after all not escaped. He _was_ in love
with her: he had been in love with her from the first hour.

BOOK THIRD

XIII

The drive from Harsh to the Place, as it was called thereabouts, could
be achieved by swift horses in less than ten minutes; and if Mrs.
Dallow's ponies were capital trotters the general high pitch of the
occasion made it all congruous they should show their speed. The
occasion was the polling-day an hour after the battle. The ponies had
kept pace with other driven forces for the week before, passing and
repassing the neat windows of the flat little town--Mrs. Dallow had the
complacent belief that there was none in the kingdom in which the
flower-stands looked more respectable between the stiff muslin
curtains--with their mistress behind them on her all but silver wheels.
Very often she was accompanied by the Liberal candidate, but even when
she was not the equipage seemed scarce less to represent his easy,
friendly confidence. It moved in a radiance of ribbons and hand-bills
and hand-shakes and smiles; of quickened commerce and sudden intimacy;
of sympathy which assumed without presuming and gratitude which promised
without soliciting. But under Julia's guidance the ponies pattered now,
with no indication of a loss of freshness, along the firm, wide avenue
which wound and curved, to make up in large effect for not undulating,
from the gates opening straight on the town to the Palladian mansion,
high, square, grey, and clean, which stood among terraces and fountains
in the centre of the park. A generous steed had been sacrificed to bring
the good news from Ghent to Aix, but no such extravagance was after all