‘Here’s one of the houses I stop at,’ said Beauchamp, ’and drop that subject.’

A scared servant-girl brought out her wizened mistress to confront the candidate, and to this representative of the sex he addressed his arts of persuasion, requesting her to repeat his words to her husband.  The contrast between Beauchamp palpably canvassing and the Beauchamp who was the lover of the Marquise of the forgotten name, struck too powerfully on Palmet for his gravity he retreated.

Beauchamp found him sauntering on the pavement, and would have dismissed him but for an agreeable diversion that occurred at that moment.  A suavely smiling unctuous old gentleman advanced to them, bowing, and presuming thus far, he said, under the supposition that he was accosting the junior Liberal candidate for the borough.  He announced his name and his principles Tomlinson, progressive Liberal.

‘A true distinction from some Liberals I know,’ said Beauchamp.

Mr. Tomlinson hoped so.  Never, he said, did he leave it to the man of his choice at an election to knock at his door for the vote.

Beauchamp looked as if he had swallowed a cordial.  Votes falling into his lap are heavenly gifts to the candidate sick of the knocker and the bell.  Mr. Tomlinson eulogized the manly candour of the junior Liberal candidate’s address, in which he professed to see ideas that distinguished it from the address of the sound but otherwise conventional Liberal, Mr. Cougham.  He muttered of plumping for Beauchamp.  ’Don’t plump,’ Beauchamp said; and a candidate, if he would be an honourable twin, must say it.  Cougham had cautioned him against the heresy of plumping.

They discoursed of the poor and their beverages, of pothouses, of the anti-liquorites, and of the duties of parsons, and the value of a robust and right-minded body of the poor to the country.  Palmet found himself following them into a tolerably spacious house that he took to be the old gentleman’s until some of the apparatus of an Institute for literary and scientific instruction revealed itself to him, and he heard Mr. Tomlinson exalt the memory of one Wingham for the blessing bequeathed by him to the town of Bevisham.  ‘For,’ said Mr. Tomlinson, ’it is open to both sexes, to all respectable classes, from ten in the morning up to ten at night.  Such a place affords us, I would venture to say, the advantages without the seductions of a Club.  I rank it next—­at a far remove, but next-the church.’

Lord Palmet brought his eyes down from the busts of certain worthies ranged along the top of the book-shelves to the cushioned chairs, and murmured, ‘Capital place for an appointment with a woman.’

Mr. Tomlinson gazed up at him mildly, with a fallen countenance.  He turned sadly agape in silence to the busts, the books, and the range of scientific instruments, and directed a gaze under his eyebrows at Beauchamp.  ‘Does your friend canvass with you?’ he inquired.