Thus, when old but by no means senile, she learnt that disquiet of conscience, so common in our day, which has nothing to do with spiritual perceptiveness, but comes of habitual concentration on every-day cares and woes, on the life of the world as apart from that of the soul.  Through sleepless nights, Lady Ogram brooded over the contrast between her own exaltation and the hopeless level of the swinking multitude.  What should she do with her money?  The question perturbed her with a sense of responsibility which would have had no meaning for her in earlier years.  How could she best use the vast opportunity for good which lay to her hand?

Endless were the projects she formed, rejected, took up again.  Vast was the correspondence she held with all manner of representative people, seeking for information, accumulating reports, lectures, argumentative pamphlets, theoretic volumes, in mass altogether beyond her ability to cope with; nowadays, her secretary read and digested and summarised with tireless energy.  Lady Ogram had never cared much for reading; she admired Constance’s quick intelligence and power of grappling with printed matter.  But that she had little faith in the future of her own sex, she would have been tempted to say:  “There is the coming woman.”  Miss Bride’s companionship was soon indispensable to her; she had begun to dread the thought of being left alone with her multiplying solicitudes and uncertainties.

Her great resource in these days was her savage hatred of Mr. Robb and his family, and of all in any way adhering to him.  Whenever she fixed her mind on that, all wider troubles fled into space, and she was the natural woman of her prime once more.  Since making the acquaintance of Dyce Lashmar, she had thought of little but this invigorating theme.  At last she had found the man to stand against Robb the Grinder, the man of hope, a political and moral enthusiast who might sweep away the mass of rotten privilege and precedent encumbering the borough of Hollingford.  She wrote to all her friends, at Hollingford and throughout the country, making known that the ideal candidate in the Liberal cause had at last been discovered.  And presently she sent out invitations to a dinner, on a day a fortnight ahead, which should assemble some dozen of her faithful, to meet and hear the eloquent young philosopher.

Excitement was not good for Lady Ogram’s health; the doctors agreed in prescribing tranquillity, and she had so far taken their advice as to live of late in comparative retirement.  Her observant companion noticed that the conversations with Lashmar had been followed by signs of great fatigue; an agitated manner, a temper even more uncertain than usual, and physical symptoms which Constance had learnt to look for, proved during the ensuing days that the invalid was threatened with another crisis.  Acting on her own responsibility, Constance addressed a note to Dr. Baldwin, who presently, as if making a casual call, dropped in to see his patient.  The doctor knew how to comport himself with Lady Ogram.  He began by remarking cheerfully how well she looked, and asking whether she had settled the details of her summer holiday.  Dull and rather sullen of air, Lady Ogram replied with insignificant brevities; then, as the doctor chatted on about local matters, her interest gradually awoke.