“You did that much longer than I ought to have allowed,” returned Dyce.  “I feel myself to a great extent the cause of your troubles—­”

“Nothing of the kind,” broke in his father, cheerily.  “Troubles be—­excommunicated!  This hot weather takes it out of me a little, but I’m very well and not at all discouraged; so don’t think it.  To tell you the truth, I’ve been feeling anxious to hear more in detail from you about this Hollingford enterprise.  Have you serious hopes?”

“I hardly think I shall be elected the first time,” Dyce answered, speaking with entire frankness.  “But it’ll be experience, and may open the way for me.”

“Parliament,” mused the vicar, “Parliament!  To be sure, we must have Members; it’s our way of doing things, of governing the country.  And if you really feel apt for that—­”

He paused dreamily.  Dyce, still under the impulse of softened feelings, spoke as he seldom did, very simply, quietly, sincerely.

“I believe, father, that I am not unfit for it.  Politics, it’s true, don’t interest me very strongly, but I have brains enough to get the necessary knowledge, and I feel that I shall do better work in a prominent position of that kind than if I went on tutoring or took to journalism.  As you say, we must have representatives, and I should not be the least capable, or the least honest.  I find I can speak fairly well; I find I can inspire people with confidence in me.  And, without presumption, I don’t think the confidence is misplaced.”

“Well, that’s something,” said the vicar, absently.  “But you talk as if politics were a profession one could live by.  I don’t yet understand—­”

“How I’m going to live.  Nor do I. I’ll tell you that frankly.  But Lady Ogram knows my circumstances, and none the less urges me on.  It may be taken for granted that she has something in view; and, after giving a good deal of thought to the matter, I see no valid reason why I should refuse any assistance she chooses to offer me.  The case would not be without precedent.  There is nothing dishonourable—­”

Dyce drifted into verbosity.  At the beginning, he had lost from sight the impossibility of telling the whole truth about his present position and the prospects on which he counted; he spoke with relief, and would gladly have gone on unbosoming himself.  Strong and deeprooted is the instinct of confession.  Unable to ease his conscience regarding outward circumstances, he turned at length to the question of his intellectual attitude.

“Do you remember, when I was here last, I spoke to you of a French book I had been reading, a sociological work?  As I told you, it had a great influence on my mind.  It helped to set my ideas in order.  Before then, I had only the vaguest way of thinking about political and social questions.  That book supplied me with a scientific principle, which I have since been working out for myself.”

“Ha!” interjected the vicar, looking up oddly.  “And you really feel in need of a scientific principle?”