’You’re quite welcome to examine my character for yourself, only I don’t consent to be catechized.  Understand that.’

‘You quite understand that, Mr. Tripehallow,’ said Oggler, bolder in taking up the strange name than Beauchamp had been.

’I understand that.  But you understand, there’s never been a word against the morals of Mr. Cougham.  Here’s the point:  Do we mean to be a moral country?  Very well, then so let our representatives be, I say.  And if I hear nothing against your morals, Mr. Commander, I don’t say you shan’t have my vote.  I mean to deliberate.  You young nobs capering over our heads—­I nail you down to morals.  Politics secondary.  Adew, as the dying spirit remarked to weeping friends.’

‘Au revoir—­would have been kinder,’ said Palmet.

Mr. Tripehallow smiled roguishly, to betoken comprehension.

Beauchamp asked Mr. Oggler whether that fellow was to be taken for a humourist or a five-pound-note man.

‘It may be both, sir.  I know he’s called Morality Joseph.’

An all but acknowledged five-pound-note man was the last they visited.  He cut short the preliminaries of the interview by saying that he was a four-o’clock man; i.e. the man who waited for the final bids to him upon the closing hour of the election day.

‘Not one farthing!’ said Beauchamp, having been warned beforehand of the signification of the phrase by his canvassing lieutenant.

‘Then you’re nowhere,’ the honest fellow replied in the mystic tongue of prophecy.

Palmet and Beauchamp went to their fish and meat; smoked a cigarette or two afterward, conjured away the smell of tobacco from their persons as well as they could, and betook themselves to the assembly-room of the Liberal party, where the young lord had an opportunity of beholding Mr. Cougham, and of listening to him for an hour and forty minutes.  He heard Mr. Timothy Turbot likewise.  And Miss Denham was present.  Lord Palmet applauded when she smiled.  When she looked attentive he was deeply studious.  Her expression of fatigue under the sonorous ring of statistics poured out from Cougham was translated by Palmet into yawns and sighs of a profoundly fraternal sympathy.  Her face quickened on the rising of Beauchamp to speak.  She kept eye on him all the while, as Palmet, with the skill of an adept in disguising his petty larceny of the optics, did on her.  Twice or thrice she looked pained:  Beauchamp was hesitating for the word.  Once she looked startled and shut her eyes:  a hiss had sounded; Beauchamp sprang on it as if enlivened by hostility, and dominated the factious note.  Thereat she turned to a gentleman sitting beside her; apparently they agreed that some incident had occurred characteristic of Nevil Beauchamp; for whom, however, it was not a brilliant evening.  He was very well able to account for it, and did so, after he had walked a few steps with Miss Denham on her homeward way.