‘I want him to taste it,’ Beauchamp replied, and immediately introduced the affable young lord—­a proceeding marked by some of the dexterity he had once been famous for, as was shown by a subsequent observation of Mr. Tomlinson’s: 

‘Yes,’ he said, on the question of classes, ’yes, I fear we have classes in this country whose habitual levity sharp experience will have to correct.  I very much fear it.’

’But if you have classes that are not to face realities classes that look on them from the box-seats of a theatre,’ said Beauchamp, ’how can you expect perfect seriousness, or any good service whatever?’

’Gently, sir, gently.  No; we can, I feel confident, expand within the limits of our most excellent and approved Constitution.  I could wish that socially . . . that is all.’

‘Socially and politically mean one thing in the end,’ said Beauchamp.  ’If you have a nation politically corrupt, you won’t have a good state of morals in it, and the laws that keep society together bear upon the politics of a country.’

‘True; yes,’ Mr. Tomlinson hesitated assent.  He dissociated Beauchamp from Lord Palmet, but felt keenly that the latter’s presence desecrated Wingham’s Institute, and he informed the candidate that he thought he would no longer detain him from his labours.

‘Just the sort of place wanted in every provincial town,’ Palmet remarked by way of a parting compliment.

Mr. Tomlinson bowed a civil acknowledgement of his having again spoken.

No further mention was made of the miraculous vote which had risen responsive to the candidate’s address of its own inspired motion; so Beauchamp said, ’I beg you to bear in mind that I request you not to plump.’

‘You may be right, Captain Beauchamp.  Good day, sir.’

Palmet strode after Beauchamp into the street.

‘Why did you set me bowing to that old boy?’ he asked.

‘Why did you talk about women?’ was the rejoinder.

‘Oh, aha!’ Palmet sang to himself.  ’You’re a Romfrey, Beauchamp.  A blow for a blow!  But I only said what would strike every fellow first off.  It is the place; the very place.  Pastry-cooks’ shops won’t stand comparison with it.  Don’t tell me you ’re the man not to see how much a woman prefers to be under the wing of science and literature, in a good-sized, well-warmed room, with a book, instead of making believe, with a red face, over a tart.’

He received a smart lecture from Beauchamp, and began to think he had enough of canvassing.  But he was not suffered to escape.  For his instruction, for his positive and extreme good, Beauchamp determined that the heir to an earldom should have a day’s lesson.  We will hope there was no intention to punish him for having frozen the genial current of Mr. Tomlinson’s vote and interest; and it may be that he clung to one who had, as he imagined, seen Renee.  Accompanied by a Mr. Oggler, a tradesman