‘We three will sit in the library, anywhere,’ said Cecilia.

So they sat and lunched in the library, where Mrs. Devereux served unconsciously for an excellent ally to Cecilia in chatting to Beauchamp, principally of the writings of Mr. Lydiard.

Had the blinds of the windows been drawn down and candles lighted, Beauchamp would have been well contented to remain with these two ladies, and forget the outer world; sweeter society could not have been offered him:  but glancing carelessly on to the lawn, he exclaimed in some wonderment that the man he particularly wished to see was there.  ’It must be Dollikins, the brewer.  I’ve had him pointed out to me in Bevisham, and I never can light on him at his brewery.’

No excuse for detaining the impetuous candidate struck Cecilia.  She betook herself to Mrs. Lespel, to give and receive counsel in the emergency, while Beauchamp struck across the lawn to Mr. Dollikins, who had the squire of Itchincope on the other side of him.

Late in the afternoon a report reached the ladies of a furious contest going on over Dollikins.  Mr. Algy Borolick was the first to give them intelligence of it, and he declared that Beauchamp had wrested Dollikins from Grancey Lespel.  This was contradicted subsequently by Mr. Stukely Culbrett.  ‘But there’s heavy pulling between them,’ he said.

‘It will do all the good in the world to Grancey,’ said Mrs. Lespel.

She sat in her little blue-room, with gentlemen congregating at the open window.

Presently Grancey Lespel rounded a projection of the house where the drawing-room stood out:  ‘The maddest folly ever talked!’ he delivered himself in wrath.  ‘The Whigs dead?  You may as well say I’m dead.’

It was Beauchamp answering:  ’Politically, you’re dead, if you call yourself a Whig.  You couldn’t be a live one, for the party’s in pieces, blown to the winds.  The country was once a chess-board for Whig and Tory:  but that game’s at an end.  There’s no doubt on earth that the Whigs are dead.’

‘But if there’s no doubt about it, how is it I have a doubt about it?’

’You know you’re a Tory.  You tried to get that man Dollikins from me in the Tory interest.’

’I mean to keep him out of Radical clutches.  Now that ‘s the truth.’

They came up to the group by the open window, still conversing hotly, indifferent to listeners.

‘You won’t keep him from me; I have him,’ said Beauchamp.

‘You delude yourself; I have his promise, his pledged word,’ said Grancey Lespel.

‘The man himself told you his opinion of renegade Whigs.’

‘Renegade!’

‘Renegade Whig is an actionable phrase,’ Mr. Culbrett observed.

He was unnoticed.

‘If you don’t like “renegade,” take “dead,"’ said Beauchamp.  ’Dead Whig resurgent in the Tory.  You are dead.’

‘It’s the stupid conceit of your party thinks that.’