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.