A copy of the Hollingford Express, posted, no doubt, by Lashmar, informed him that the private meeting of Liberals at the Saracen’s Head had resulted in acceptance of his friend’s candidature.  There was a long report of Lashmar’s speech, which he read critically, and not without envy.  Whether he came to be elected or not, Lashmar was doing something; he knew the joy of activity, of putting out his strength, of moving others by the energy of his mind.  This morning, his Highgate lodgings seemed to Dymchurch, a very cave in the wilderness.  The comforts and the graceful things amid which he lived had bat all meaning; unless, indeed, they symbolised a dilettante decadence of which he ought to be heartily ashamed.  He ran over the contents of the provincial newspaper, and in every column found something that rebuked him.  These municipal proceedings, what zeal and capability they implied!  Was it not better, a thousand times, to be excited about the scheme for paving “Burgess Lane” than to sit here amid books and pictures, and do nothing at all but smoke one’s favourite mixture?  The world hummed about him with industry, with triumphant effort; and he alone of all men could put his hand to nothing.

His thought somehow turned upon Miss Tomalin.  What was it that he found so piquant in that half-educated, indifferently-bred girl?  Might it not be that she represented an order of Society with which he had no acquaintance, that vague multitude between the refined middle class and the rude toilers, which, as he knew theoretically, played such an important part in modern civilisation?  Among these people, energy was naked, motives were direct.  There the strength and the desires of the people became vocal; they must be studied, if one wished to know the trend of things.  Had he not seen it remarked somewhere that from this class sprang nearly all the younger representatives of literature and art, the poets, novelists, journalists of to-day; all the vigorous young workers in science?  Lashmar, he felt sure, was but one remove from it.  That busy and aspiring multitude would furnish, most likely, by far the greater part of the spiritual aristocracy for which our world was waiting.

From this point of view, the girl had a new interest.  She was destined, perhaps, to be the mother of some great man.  He hoped she would not marry foolishly; the wealth she must soon inherit hardly favoured her chances in this respect; doubtless she would be surrounded by unprincipled money-hunters.  On the whole, it seemed rather a pity that Lashmar had not chosen and won her; there would have been a fitness, one felt, in that alliance.  At the same time, Lashmar’s selection of an undowered mate spoke well for him.  For it was to be presumed that Lady Ogram’s secretary had no very brilliant prospects.  Certainly she did not make much impression at the first glance; one would take her for a sensible, thoughtful woman, nothing more.

After a lapse of twenty-four hours, he replied to Mrs. Toplady.  Yes, if the weather were not too discouraging, he hoped to be at Lady Honeybourne’s.  He added that the fact of Lashmar’s engagement had come as news to him.