Marsham, left alone, lit a cigarette, and fell hungrily upon the paper, his forehead and lips still drawn with pain.  The paper contained an account of the stone-throwing at Hartingfield, and of the injury to himself; a full record of the last five or six days of the election, and of the proceedings at the declaration of the poll; a report, moreover, of the “chivalrous and sympathetic references” made by the newly elected Conservative member to the “dastardly attack” upon his rival, which the “whole of West Brookshire condemns and deplores.”

The leading article “condemned” and “deplored,” at considerable length and in good set terms, through two paragraphs.  In the third it “could not disguise—­from itself or its readers”—­that Mr. Marsham’s defeat by so large a majority had been a strong probability from the first, and had been made a certainty by the appearance on the eve of the poll of “the Barrington letter.”  “No doubt, some day, Mr. Marsham will give his old friends and former constituents in this division the explanations in regard to this letter—­taken in connection with his own repeated statements at meetings and in the press—­which his personal honor and their long fidelity seem to demand.  Meanwhile we can only express to our old member our best wishes both for his speedy recovery from the effects of a cowardly and disgraceful attack, and for the restoration of a political position which only a few months ago seemed so strong and so full of promise.”

Marsham put down the paper.  He could see the whipper-snapper of an editor writing the lines, with a wary eye both to the past and future of the Marsham influence in the division.  The self-made, shrewd little man had been Oliver’s political slave and henchman through two Parliaments; and he had no doubt reflected that neither the Tallyn estates, nor the Marsham wealth had been wiped out by the hostile majority of last Saturday.  At the same time, the state of feeling in the division was too strong; the paper which depended entirely on local support could not risk its very existence by countering it.

Marsham’s keen brain spared him nothing.  His analysis of his own situation, made at leisure during the week which had elapsed since the election, had been as pitiless and as acute as that of any opponent could have been.  He knew exactly what he had lost, and why.

A majority of twelve hundred against him, in a constituency where, up to the dissolution, he had commanded a majority—­for him—­of fifteen hundred.  And that at a general election, when his party was sweeping the country!

He had, of course, resigned his office, and had received a few civil and sympathetic words from the Premier—­words which but for his physical injury, so the recipient of them suspected, might have been a good deal less civil and less sympathetic.  No effort had been made to delay the decision.  For a Cabinet Minister, defeated at a bye-election, a seat must be found.  For a Junior Lord and a Second Whip nobody will put themselves out.