“Nay, Jemima!” said Mr. Farquhar, touched, and secretly flattered by the visible pain his speech bad given.  “Don’t be indignant with me till I have explained myself a little more.  I don’t understand myself yet; and it is a very intricate question, or so it appears to me, which I was going to put, really, earnestly, and humbly, for Mr. Benson’s opinion.  Now, Mr. Benson, may I ask if you always find it practicable to act strictly in accordance with that principle?  For if you do not, I am sure no man living can.  Are there not occasions when it is absolutely necessary to wade through evil to good?  I am not speaking in the careless, presumptuous way of that man yonder,” said he, lowering his voice, and addressing himself to Jemima more exclusively; “I am really anxious to hear what Mr. Benson will say on the subject, for I know no one to whose candid opinion I should attach more weight.”

But Mr. Benson was silent.  He did not see Mrs. Bradshaw and Jemima leave the room.  He was really, as Mr. Farquhar supposed him, completely absent, questioning himself as to how far his practice tallied with his principle.  By degrees he came to himself; he found the conversation still turned on the election; and Mr. Hickson, who felt that he had jarred against the little minister’s principles, and yet knew, from the carte du pays which the scouts of the parliamentary agent had given him, that Mr. Benson was a person to be conciliated, on account of his influence over many of the working-people, began to ask him questions with an air of deferring to superior knowledge, that almost surprised Mr. Bradshaw, who had been accustomed to treat “Benson” in a very different fashion, of civil condescending indulgence, just as one listens to a child who can have had no opportunities of knowing better.

At the end of a conversation that Mr. Hickson held with Mr. Benson, on a subject in which the latter was really interested, and on which he had expressed himself at some length, the young barrister turned to Mr. Bradshaw and said very audibly—­

“I wish Donne had been here.  This conversation during the last half-hour would have interested him almost as much as it has done me.”

Mr. Bradshaw little guessed the truth, that Mr. Donne was, at that very moment, coaching up the various subjects of public interest at Eccleston, and privately cursing the particular subject on which Mr. Benson had been holding forth, as being an unintelligible piece of Quixotism; or the leading Dissenter of the town need not have experienced a pang of jealousy at the possible future admiration his minister might excite in the possible future member for Eccleston.  And if Mr. Benson had been clairvoyant, he need not have made an especial subject of gratitude out of the likelihood that he might have an opportunity of so far interesting Mr. Donne in the condition of the people of Eccleston as to induce him to set his face against any attempts at bribery.