Wilkins, since the first disclosure of the Clarion change of policy, had been astonishingly quiet.  Wharton had made certain of violent attack from him.  On the contrary, Wilkins wore now in the House a subdued and pre-occupied air that escaped notice even with his own party in the general fulness of the public mind.  A few caustic north-countryisms on the subject of the Clarion and its master did indeed escape him now and then, and were reported from mouth to mouth; but on the whole he lay very low.

Still, whether in elation or anxiety, Wharton seemed to himself throughout the whole period to be a fighter, straining every muscle, his back to the wall and his hand against every man.  There at the end of the fortnight stood the three goal-posts that must be passed, in victory or defeat; the meeting that would for the present decide his parliamentary prospects, his interview with Marcella, and—­the confounded annual meeting of the “People’s Banking Company,” with all its threatened annoyances.

He became, indeed, more and more occupied with this latter business as the days went on.  But he could see no way of evading it.  He would have to fight it; luckily, now, he had the money.

The annual meeting took place two days before that fixed for the committee of the Labour party.  Wharton was not present at it, and in spite of ample warning he gave way to certain lively movements of disgust and depression when at his club he first got hold of the evening papers containing the reports.  His name, of course, figured amply in the denunciations heaped upon the directors of all dates; the sums which he with others were supposed to have made out of the first dealings with the shares on the Stock Exchange were freely mentioned; and the shareholders as a body had shown themselves most uncomfortably violent.  He at once wrote off a letter to the papers disclaiming all responsibility for the worst irregularities which had occurred, and courting full enquiry—­a letter which, as usual, both convinced and affected himself.

Then he went, restless and fuming, down to the House.  Bennett passed him in the lobby with an uneasy and averted eye.  Whereupon Wharton seized upon him, carried him into the Library, and talked to him, till Bennett, who, in spite of his extraordinary shrewdness and judgment in certain departments, was a babe in matters of company finance, wore a somewhat cheered countenance.

They came out into the lobby together, Wharton holding his head very high.

“I shall deal with the whole thing in my speech on Thursday!” he said aloud, as they parted.

Bennett gave him a friendly nod and smile.

There was in this little man, with his considerable brain and his poet’s heart, something of the “imperishable child.”  Like a wholesome child, he did not easily “think evil”; his temper towards all men—­even the owners of “way-leaves” and mining royalties—­was optimist.  He had the most naive admiration for Wharton’s ability, and for the academic attainments he himself secretly pined for; and to the young complex personality itself he had taken from the beginning an unaccountable liking.  The bond between the two, though incongruous and recent, was real; Wharton was as glad of Bennett’s farewell kindness as Bennett had been of the younger man’s explanations.