General Pendyce caressed his whisker.

“The least touch,” he said, “the least touch!  I hear that our friend Sir Percival is going to stand again.”

Mr. Barter rose and placed his back before the fire.

“Outrageous!” he said.  “He ought to be told at once that we can’t have him.”

The Hon. Geoffrey Winlow answered from his chair: 

“If he puts up, he’ll get in; they can’t afford to lose him.”  And with a leisurely puff of smoke:  “I must say, sir, I don’t quite see what it has to do with his public life.”

Mr. Barter thrust forth his lower lip.

“An impenitent man,” he said.

“But a woman like that!  What chance has a fellow if she once gets hold of him?”

“When I was stationed at Halifax,” began General Pendyce, “she was the belle of the place—–­”

Again Mr. Barter thrust out his lower lip.

“Don’t let’s talk of her—–­the jade!” Then suddenly to George:  “Let’s hear your opinion, George.  Dreaming of your victories, eh?” And the tone of his voice was peculiar.

But George got up.

“I’m too sleepy,” he said; “good-night.”  Curtly nodding, he left the room.

Outside the door stood a dark oak table covered with silver candlesticks; a single candle burned thereon, and made a thin gold path in the velvet blackness.  George lighted his candle, and a second gold path leaped out in front; up this he began to ascend.  He carried his candle at the level of his breast, and the light shone sideways and up over his white shirt-front and the comely, bulldog face above it.  It shone, too, into his eyes, ’grey and slightly bloodshot, as though their surfaces concealed passions violently struggling for expression.  At the turning platform of the stair he paused.  In darkness above and in darkness below the country house was still; all the little life of its day, its petty sounds, movements, comings, goings, its very breathing, seemed to have fallen into sleep.  The forces of its life had gathered into that pool of light where George stood listening.  The beating of his heart was the only sound; in that small sound was all the pulse of this great slumbering space.  He stood there long, motionless, listening to the beating of his heart, like a man fallen into a trance.  Then floating up through the darkness came the echo of a laugh.  George started.  “The d——­d parson!” he muttered, and turned up the stairs again; but now he moved like a man with a purpose, and held his candle high so that the light fell far out into the darkness.  He went beyond his own room, and stood still again.  The light of the candle showed the blood flushing his forehead, beating and pulsing in the veins at the side of his temples; showed, too, his lips quivering, his shaking hand.  He stretched out that hand and touched the handle of a door, then stood again like a man of stone, listening for the laugh.  He raised the candle, and it shone into every nook; his throat clicked, as though he found it hard to swallow....