“Chattering apes!  Malicious idiots!  Heaven forbid that you should ever take a sincere part in their gabble!  That lot are about the worst we shall have to deal with.  Decent simpletons you can get along with very well.”

“How ought I to speak of Mrs. Wade?  When people tell downright falsehoods about her, may I contradict?”

“It’s a confoundedly difficult matter, that.  I half wish Mrs. Wade would hasten her departure.  Did she say anything about it when you saw her the other day?”

“Nothing whatever.”

It appeared that the widow wished to make a friend of Lilian.  She had called several times, and on each occasion behaved so charmingly that Lilian was very ready to meet her advances.  Though on intellectual and personal grounds he could feel no objection to such an intimacy, Denzil began to fear that it might affect his popularity with some voters who would take the Liberal side if it did not commit them to social heresies.  This class is a very large one throughout England.  Mrs. Wade had never given occasion of grave scandal; she was even seen, with moderate regularity, at one or other of the churches; but many of the anti-Tory bourgeois suspected her of sympathy with views so very “advanced” as to be socially dangerous.  Already it had become known that she was on good terms with Quarrier and his wife.  It was rumoured that Quarrier would reconsider the position he had publicly assumed, and stand forth as an advocate of Female Suffrage.  For such extremes Polterham was not prepared.

“Mrs. Wade asks me to go and have tea with her to-morrow,” Lilian announced one morning, showing a note.  “Shall I, or not?”

“You would like to?”

“Not if you think it unwise.”

“Hang it!—­we can’t be slaves.  Go by all means, and refresh your mind.”

At three o’clock on the day of invitation Lilian alighted from her brougham at Pear-tree Cottage.  It was close upon the end of February; the declining sun shot a pleasant glow across the landscape, and in the air reigned a perfect stillness.  Mrs. Wade threw open the door herself with laughing welcome.

“Let us have half-an-hour’s walk, shall we?  It’s so dry and warm.”

“I should enjoy it,” Lilian answered, readily.

“Then allow me two minutes for bonnet and cloak.”

She was scarcely longer.  They went by the hedge-side path which led towards Bale Water.  To-day the papers were full of exciting news.  Sir Stafford Northcote had brought forward his resolution for making short work of obstructive Members, and Radicalism stood undecided.  Mrs. Wade talked of these things in the liveliest strain, Lilian responding with a lighthearted freedom seldom possible to her.

“You skated here, didn’t you?” said her companion, as they drew near to the large pond.

“Yes; a day or two after we came.  How different it looks now.”

They stood on the bank where it rose to a considerable height above the water.