l.
But Mr. Lewis Haystoun's light-hearted manner of regarding the business
struck the little Puritan deeper. Politics had always been a thing of
the gravest import in her eyes, bound up with a man's duty and honour
and religion, and lo! here was this Gallio who not only adorned a party
she had been led to regard as reprobate, but treated the whole affair as
a half-jocular business, on which one should not be serious. It was
sheer weakness, her heart cried out, the weakness of the philanderer,
the half-hearted. In her vexation her interest flew in sympathy to Mr.
Stocks, and she viewed him for the occasion with favour.

"You are far too frivolous about it," she cried. "How can you fight if
you are not in earnest, and how can you speak things you only half
believe? I hate to think of men playing at politics." And she had set
her little white teeth, and sat flushed and diffident, a Muse of
Protest.

Lewis flushed in turn. He recognized with pain the fulfilment of his
fears. He saw dismally how during the coming fight he would sink daily
in the estimation of this small critic, while his opponent would as
conspicuously rise. The prospect did not soothe him, and he turned to
Bertha Afflint, who was watching the scene with curious eyes.

"It's very sad, Lewie," she said, "but you'll get no canvassers from
Glenavelin. We have all been pledged to Mr. Stocks for the last week.
Alice is a keen politician, and, I believe, has permanently unsettled
Lord Manorwater's easy-going Liberalism. She believes in action;
whereas, you know, he does not."

"We all believe in action nowadays," said Wratislaw. "I could wish at
times for the revival of 'leisureliness' as a party catch-word."

And then there ensued a passage of light arms between the great man and
Bertha which did not soothe Alice's vexation. She ignored the amiable
George, seeing in him another of the half-hearted, and in a fine heat of
virtue devoted herself to Mr. Stocks. That gentleman had been
melancholy, but the favour of Miss Wishart made him relax his heavy
brows and become communicative. He was flattered by her interest. She
heard his reminiscences with a smile and his judgments with attention.
Soon the whole table talked merrily, and two people alone were aware
that breaches yawned under the unanimity.

Archness was not in Alice's nature, and still less was coquetry. When
Lewis after lunch begged to be allowed to show her his dwelling she did
not blush and simper,