Finally, with a little joyous energetic movement which betrayed the inner man, he flung down his cigarette, and turned to write an ardent letter to Marcella, while the morning sun stole into the dusty room.

Difficult? of course!  Both now and in the future.  It would take him half his time yet—­and he could ill afford it—­to bring her bound and captive.  He recognised in her the southern element, so strangely mated with the moral English temper.  Yet he smiled over it.  The subtleties of the struggle he foresaw enchanted him.

And she would be mastered!  In this heightened state of nerve his man’s resolution only rose the more fiercely to the challenge of her resistance.

Nor should she cheat him with long delays.  His income would be his own again, and life decently easy.  He already felt himself the vain showman of her beauty.

A thought of Lady Selina crossed his mind, producing amusement and compassion—­indulgent amusement, such as the young man is apt to feel towards the spinster of thirty-five who pays him attention.  A certain sense of re-habilitation, too, which at the moment was particularly welcome.  For, no doubt, he might have married her and her fortune had he so chosen.  As it was, why didn’t she find some needy boy to take pity on her?  There were plenty going, and she must have abundance of money.  Old Alresford, too, was fast doddering off the stage, and then where would she be—­without Alresford House, or Busbridge, or those various other pedestals which had hitherto held her aloft?

* * * * *

Early on Sunday morning Wharton telegraphed to Craven, directing him to “come up at once for consultation.”  The rest of the day the owner of the Clarion spent pleasantly on the river with Mrs. Lane and a party of ladies, including a young Duchess, who was pretty, literary, and socialistic.  At night he went down to the Clarion office, and produced a leader on the position of affairs at Damesley which, to the practised eye, contained one paragraph—­but one only—­wherein the dawn of a new policy might have been discerned.

Naturally the juxtaposition of events at the moment gave him considerable anxiety.  He knew very well that the Damesley bargain could not be kept waiting.  The masters were losing heavily every day, and were not likely to let him postpone the execution of his part of the contract for a fortnight or so to suit his own convenience.  It was like the sale of an “old master.”  His influence must be sold now—­at the ripe moment—­or not at all.

At the same time it was very awkward.  In one short fortnight the meeting of the party would be upon him.  Surrender on the Damesley question would give great offence to many of the Labour members.  It would have to be very carefully managed—­very carefully thought out.