his after-dinner sleep for once, that he might the more effectually secure it in the future—­proposed a vote of confidence in the Conservative candidate; when the vote was carried with much cheering and rattling of feet; when the Primrose Dames on the platform smiled graciously down upon the meeting as one smiles at good children in their moments of pretty behaviour; and when, finally, scores of toil-stained labourers, young and old, went up to have a word and a hand-shake with “Muster Raeburn,” Marcella held herself aloof and cold, with a look that threatened sarcasm should she be spoken to.  Miss Raeburn, glancing furtively round at her, was outraged anew by her expression.

“She will be a thorn in all our sides,” thought that lady.  “Aldous is a fool!—­a poor dear noble misguided fool!”

Then on the way home, she and Aldous drove together.  Marcella tried to argue, grew vehement, and said bitter things for the sake of victory, till at last Aldous, tired, worried, and deeply wounded, could bear it no longer.

“Let it be, dear, let it be!” he entreated, snatching at her hand as they rolled along through a stormy night.  “We grope in a dark world—­you see some points of light in it, I see others—­won’t you give me credit for doing what I can—­seeing what I can?  I am sure—­sure—­you will find it easier to bear with differences when we are quite together—­when there are no longer all these hateful duties and engagements—­and persons—­between us.”

“Persons!  I don’t know what you mean!” said Marcella.

Aldous only just restrained himself in time.  Out of sheer fatigue and slackness of nerve he had been all but betrayed into some angry speech on the subject of Wharton, the echoes of whose fantastic talk, as it seemed to him, were always hanging about Mellor when he went there.  But he did refrain, and was thankful.  That he was indeed jealous and disturbed, that he had been jealous and disturbed from the moment Harry Wharton had set foot in Mellor, he himself knew quite well.  But to play the jealous part in public was more than the Raeburn pride could bear.  There was the dread, too, of defining the situation—­of striking some vulgar irrevocable note.

So he parried Marcella’s exclamation by asking her whether she had any idea how many human hands a parliamentary candidate had to shake between breakfast and bed; and then, having so slipped into another tone, he tried to amuse himself and her by some of the daily humours of the contest.  She lent herself to it and laughed, her look mostly turned away from him, as though she were following the light of the carriage lamps as it slipped along the snow-laden hedges, her hand lying limply in his.  But neither were really gay.  His soreness of mind grew as in the pauses of talk he came to realise more exactly the failure of the evening—­of his very successful and encouraging meeting—­from his own private point of view.

“Didn’t you like that last speech?” he broke out suddenly—­“that labourer’s speech?  I thought you would.  It was entirely his own idea—­nobody asked him to do it.”