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As to the political situation, nothing could be at once more promising or more anxious!

An important meeting of the whole Labour group had been fixed for August 10, by which time it was expected that a great measure concerning Labour would be returned from the House of Lords with highly disputable amendments.  The last six weeks of the session would be in many ways more critical for Labour than its earlier months had been; and it would be proposed by Bennett, at the meeting on the 10th, to appoint a general chairman of the party, in view of a campaign which would fill the remainder of the session and strenuously occupy the recess.

That Bennett would propose the name of the member for West Brookshire was perfectly well known to Wharton and his friends.  That the nomination would meet with the warmest hostility from Wilkins and a small group of followers was also accurately forecast.

To this day, then, Wharton looked forward as to the crisis of his parliamentary fortunes.  All his chances, financial or social, must now be calculated with reference to it.  Every power, whether of combat or finesse, that he commanded must be brought to bear upon the issue.

What was, however, most remarkable in the man and the situation at the moment was that, through all these gathering necessities, he was by no means continuously anxious or troubled in his mind.  During these days of July he gave himself, indeed, whenever he could, to a fatalist oblivion of the annoyances of life, coupled with a passionate pursuit of all those interests where his chances were still good and the omens still with him.

Especially—­during the intervals of ambition, intrigue, journalism, and unsuccessful attempts to raise money—­had he meditated the beauty of Marcella Boyce and the chances and difficulties of his relation to her.  As he saw her less, he thought of her more, instinctively looking to her for the pleasure and distraction that life was temporarily denying him elsewhere.

At the same time, curiously enough, the stress of his financial position was reflected even in what, to himself, at any rate, he was boldly beginning to call his “passion” for her.  It had come to his knowledge that Mr. Boyce had during the past year succeeded beyond all expectation in clearing the Mellor estate.  He had made skilful use of a railway lately opened on the edge of his property; had sold building land in the neighbourhood of a small country town on the line, within a convenient distance of London; had consolidated and improved several of his farms and relet them at higher rents; was, in fact, according to Wharton’s local informant, in a fair way to be some day, if he lived, quite as prosperous as his grandfather, in spite of old scandals and invalidism.  Wharton knew, or thought he knew, that he would not live, and that Marcella would be his heiress.  The prospect was not perhaps brilliant, but it was something; it affected the outlook.