The appointment would involve re-election.  All that infernal business to go through again!—­probably in the very midst of disturbances in the mining district.  The news from the collieries was as bad as it could be.

* * * * *

He reached home very late—­close on midnight.  His mother had gone to bed, ill and worn out, and was not to be disturbed.  Isabel Fotheringham and Alicia awaited him in the drawing-room.

Mrs. Fotheringham had arrived in the course of the evening.  She herself was peevish with fatigue, incurred in canvassing for two of Lord Philip’s most headlong supporters.  Personally, she had broken with John Ferrier some weeks before the election; but the fact had made more impression on her own mind than on his.

“Well, Oliver, this is a shocking thing!  However, of course, Ferrier had been unhealthy for a long time; any one could see that.  It was really better it should end so.”

“You take it calmly!” he said, scandalized by her manner and tone.

“I am sorry, of course.  But Ferrier had outlived himself.  The people I have been working among felt him merely in the way.  But, of course, I am sorry mamma is dreadfully upset.  That one must expect.  Well, now then—­you have seen Broadstone?”

She rose to question him, the political passion in her veins asserting itself against her weariness.  She was still in her travelling dress.  From her small, haggard face the reddish hair was drawn tightly back; the spectacled eyes, the dry lips, expressed a woman whose life had hardened to dusty uses.  Her mere aspect chilled and repelled her brother, and he answered her questions shortly.

“Broadstone has treated you shabbily!” she remarked, with decision; “but I suppose you will have to put up with it.  And this terrible thing that has happened to-day may tell against you when it comes to the election.  Ferrier will be looked upon as a martyr, and we shall suffer.”

Oliver turned his eyes for relief to Alicia.  She, in a soft black dress, with many slender chains, studded with beautiful turquoises, about her white neck, rested and cheered his sight.  The black was for sympathy with the family sorrow; the turquoises were there because he specially admired them; he understood them both.  The night was hot, and without teasing him with questions she had brought him a glass of iced lemonade, touching him caressingly on the arm while he drank it.

“Poor Mr. Ferrier!  It was terribly, terribly sad!” Her voice was subtly tuned and pitched.  It made no fresh claim on emotion, of which, in his mental and moral exhaustion, he had none to give; but it more than met the decencies of the situation, which Isabel had flouted.

“So there will be another election?” she said, presently, still standing in front of him, erect and provocative, her eyes fixed on his.

“Yes; but I sha’n’t be such a brute as to bother you with it this time.”