She rose, and Lashmar gazed at her.  He saw that she was as little to be moved by an appeal, by an argument, as the marble bust behind her.

“I suppose,” he said, “you will appear on platforms?”

“Oh dear no!” Constance replied, with a laugh.  “My ambition doesn’t take that form.  I leave that to you, who are much more eloquent.”

“How you have altered!” He kept gazing at her, with a certain awe.  “I hardly know you.”

“I doubt whether you know me at all.  Never mind.”  She held out her hand.  “We may be friends yet when you have come to understand that you are not so very, very much my superior.”

CHAPTER XXVII

Lashmar walked hack to Hollingford, and reached the hotel without any consciousness of the road by which he had come.  He felt as tired as if he had been walking all day.  When he had dropped into an easy chair, he let his arms hang, and, with head drooping forward, stared at his feet stretched out before him:  the posture suggested a man half overcome with drink.

He had a private meeting to attend to-night.  Should he attend it or not?  His situation had become farcical.  Was it not his plain duty to withdraw at once from the political contest, that a serious candidate might as soon as possible take his place?  Where could he discern even the glimmer of a hope in this sudden darkness?  His heart was heavy and cold.

He went through the business of the evening, talking automatically, seeing and hearing as in a dream.  He had no longer the slightest faith in his electioneering prospects, and wondered how he could ever have been sanguine about them.  Of course the Conservative would win.  Breakspeare knew it; every member of the committee knew it; they pretended to hope because the contest amused and occupied them.  No Liberal had a chance at Hollingford.  To-morrow he would throw the thing up, and disappear.  Never in his life had he passed such a miserable night.  At each waking from hag-ridden slumbers, the blackest despondency beset him; once or twice his tortured brain even glanced towards suicide; temptation lurking in the assurance that, by destroying himself, he would become, for a few days at all events, the subject of universal interest.  He found no encouragement even in the thought of Iris Woolstan.  Not only had he deeply offended her by his engagement to Constance Bride, but almost certainly she would hear from her friend Mrs. Toplady the whole truth of his disaster, which put him beyond hope of pardon.  He owed her money; with what face, even if she did not know the worst, could he go to her and ask for another loan?  In vain did he remember the many proofs he had received of Mrs. Woolstan’s devotion; since the interview with Constance, all belief in himself was at an end.  He had thought his eloquence, his personal magnetism, irresistible; Constance had shown him the extent of his delusion.  If he saw Iris, the result would be the same.