* * * * *

Meanwhile the two in question were walking along the edge of the hill rampart overlooking the plain, with the road on one side of them, and the falling beech woods on the other.  They were on a woodland path, just within the trees, sheltered, and to all intents and purposes alone.  The maid, with leisurely discretion, was following far behind them on the high road.

Marcella, who felt at moments as though she could hardly breathe, by reason of a certain tumult of nerve, was yet apparently bent on maintaining a conversation without breaks.  As they diverged from the road into the wood-path, she plunged into the subject of her companion’s election prospects.  How many meetings did he find that he must hold in the month?  What places did he regard as his principal strongholds?  She was told that certain villages, which she named, were certain to go Radical, whatever might be the Tory promises.  As to a well-known Conservative League, which was very strong in the country, and to which all the great ladies, including Lady Winterbourne, belonged, was he actually going to demean himself by accepting its support?  How was it possible to defend the bribery, buns, and beer by which it won its corrupting way?

Altogether, a quick fire of questions, remarks, and sallies, which Aldous met and parried as best he might, comforting himself all the time by thought of those deeper and lonelier parts of the wood which lay before them.  At last she dropped out, half laughing, half defiant, words which arrested him,—­

“Well, I shall know what the other side think of their prospects very soon.  Mr. Wharton is coming to lunch with us to-morrow.”

“Harry Wharton!” he said astonished.  “But Mr. Boyce is not supporting him.  Your father, I think, is Conservative?”

One of Dick Boyce’s first acts as owner of Mellor, when social rehabilitation had still looked probable to him, had been to send a contribution to the funds of the League aforesaid, so that Aldous had public and conspicuous grounds for his remark.

“Need one measure everything by politics?” she asked him a little disdainfully.  “Mayn’t one even feed a Radical?”

He winced visibly a moment, touched in his philosopher’s pride.

“You remind me,” he said, laughing and reddening—­“and justly—­that an election perverts all one’s standards and besmirches all one’s morals.  Then I suppose Mr. Wharton is an old friend?”

“Papa never saw him before last week,” she said carelessly.  “Now he talks of asking him to stay some time, and says that, although he won’t vote for him, he hopes that he will make a good fight.”

Raeburn’s brow contracted in a puzzled frown.