He pointed to the local newspaper, freshly cut, which lay on a table at Marcella’s elbow.

“Sometimes—­” said Marcella, embarrassed.  “There is so little time.”

In truth she had hardly given his candidature a thought since the day Aldous proposed to her.  She had been far too much taken up with her own prospects, with Lady Winterbourne’s friendship, and her village schemes.

He laughed.

“Of course there is.  When is the great event to be?”

“I didn’t mean that,” said Marcella, stiffly.  “Lady Winterbourne and I have been trying to start some village workshops.  We have been working and talking, and writing, morning, noon, and night.”

“Oh!  I know—­yes, I heard of it.  And you really think anything is going to come out of finicking little schemes of that sort?”

His dry change of tone drew a quick look from her.  The fresh-coloured face was transformed.  In place of easy mirth and mischief, she read an acute and half contemptuous attention.

“I don’t know what you mean,” she said slowly, after a pause.  “Or rather—­I do know quite well.  You told papa—­didn’t you?—­and Mr. Raeburn says that you are a Socialist—­not half-and-half, as all the world is, but the real thing?  And of course you want great changes:  you don’t like anything that might strengthen the upper class with the people.  But that is nonsense.  You can’t get the changes for a long long time.  And, meanwhile, people must be clothed and fed and kept alive.”

She lay back in her high-backed chair and looked at him defiantly.  His lip twitched, but he kept his gravity.

“You would be much better employed in forming a branch of the Agricultural Union,” he said decidedly.  “What is the good of playing Lady Bountiful to a decayed industry?  All that is childish; we want the means of revolution.  The people who are for reform shouldn’t waste money and time on fads.”

“I understand all that,” she said scornfully, her quick breath rising and falling.  “Perhaps you don’t know that I was a member of the Venturist Society in London?  What you say doesn’t sound very new to me!”

His seriousness disappeared in laughter.  He hastily put down his cup and, stepping over to her, held out his hand.

“You a Venturist?  So am I. Joy!  Won’t you shake hands with me, as comrades should?  We are a very mixed set of people, you know, and between ourselves I don’t know that we are coming to much.  But we can make an alderman dream of the guillotine—­that is always something.  Oh! but now we can talk on quite a new footing!”

She had given him her hand for an instant, withdrawing it with shy rapidity, and he had thrown himself into a chair again, with his arms behind his head, and the air of one reflecting happily on a changed situation.  “Quite a new footing,” he repeated thoughtfully.  “But it is—­a little surprising.  What does—­what does Mr. Raeburn say to it?”