“My misfortune is,” Denzil one day confided to this friend, “that I detest the town and the people that have elected me.”

“Indeed?” returned the other, with a laugh.  “Then lay yourself out to become my successor at——­when a general election comes round again.  I hope to live out this Parliament, but sha’n’t try for another.”

About the same time he had a letter from Mrs. Wade, now in London, wherein, oddly enough, was a passage running thus: 

“You say that the thought of representing Polterham spoils your pleasure in looking forward to a political life.  Statesmen (and you will become one) have to be trained to bear many disagreeable things.  But you are not bound to Polterham for ever—­the gods forbid t Serve them in this Parliament, and in the meantime try to find another borough.”

It was his second letter from Mrs. Wade; the first had been a mere note, asking if he could bear to hear from her, and if he would let her know of his health.  He replied rather formally, considering the terms on which they stood; and, indeed, it not gratify him much to be assured of the widow’s constant friendship.

CHAPTER XXVII

Something less than a year after his marriage, Glazzard was summoned back to England by news of his brother’s death.  On the point of quitting Highmead, with Ivy, for a sojourn abroad, William Glazzard had an apoplectic seizure and died within the hour.  His affairs were in disorder; he left no will; for some time it would remain uncertain whether the relatives inherited anything but debt.

Eustace and his wife took a house in the north of London, a modest temporary abode.  There, at the close of March, Serena gave birth to a child.

During the past year Glazzard had returned to his old amusement of modelling in clay.  He drew and painted, played and composed, at intervals; but plastic art seemed to have the strongest hold upon him.  Through April he was busy with a head for which he had made many studies—­a head of Judas; in Italy he had tried to paint the same subject, but ineffectually.  The face in its latest development seemed to afford him some satisfaction.

One morning, early in May, Serena was sitting with him in the room he used as a studio.  Experience of life, and a certain measure of happiness, had made the raw girl a very pleasing and energetic woman; her face was comely, her manner refined, she spoke softly and thoughtfully, but with spirit.

“It is wonderful,” she said, after gazing long, with knitted brows, at the Judas, “but horrible.  I wish it hadn’t taken hold of you so.”

“Taken hold of me?  I care very little about it.”

“Oh, nonsense!  That’s your worst fault, Eustace.  You seem ashamed of being in earnest.  I wish you had found a pleasanter subject, but I am delighted to see you do something.  Is it quite finished?”

A servant appeared at the door.