we'll think of getting back to London, to order our furniture, and all
the rest of it. The place can be made habitable in a few weeks, I
should say."

CHAPTER XII

An emissary from Tottenham Court Road sped down to Polterham, surveyed
the vacant house, returned with professional computations. Quarrier and
Lilian abode at the old home until everything should be ready for them,
and Mrs. Liversedge represented her brother on the spot--solving the
doubts of workmen, hiring servants, making minor purchases. She invited
Denzil to bring his wife, and dwell for the present under the
Liversedge roof, but her brother preferred to wait. "I don't like
makeshifts; we must go straight into our own house; the dignity of the
Radical candidate requires it." So the work glowed, and as little time
as possible was spent over its completion.

It was midway in January when the day and hour of arrival were at last
appointed. No one was to be in the house but the servants. At four in
the afternoon Mr. and Mrs. Quarrier would receive Mr. and Mrs.
Liversedge, and thus make formal declaration of their readiness to
welcome friends. Since her return to England, Lilian had seen no one.
She begged Denzil not to invite Glazzard to Clapham.

They reached Polterham at one o'clock, in the tumult of a snowstorm;
ten minutes more, and the whitened cab deposited them at their doorway.
Quarrier knew, of course, what the general appearance of the interior
would be, and he was well satisfied with the way in which his
directions had been carried out. His companion was at first overawed
rather than pleased. He led her from room to room, saying frequently,
"Do you like it? Will it do?"

"It frightens me!" murmured Lilian, at length. "How shall I manage such
a house?"

She was pale, and inclined to tearfulness, for the situation tired her
fortitude in a degree Denzil could not estimate. Fears which were all
but terrors, self-reproach which had the poignancy of remorse,
tormented her gentle, timid nature. For a week and more she had not
known unbroken sleep; dreams of fantastic misery awakened her to worse
distress in the calculating of her perils and conflict with insidious
doubts. At the dead hour before dawn, faiths of childhood revived
before her conscience, upbraiding, menacing. The common rules of
every-day honour spoke to her with stern reproval. Denzil's arguments,
when she tried to muster them in her defence, answered with hollow,
meaning