Such treatment of a favourable voter seemed odd to Palmet.

‘Oh, a vote given for reasons of sentiment!’ Beauchamp interjected.

Palmet reflected and said:  ’Well, perhaps that’s how it is women don’t care uncommonly for the men who love them, though they like precious well to be loved.  Opposition does it.’

‘You have discovered my likeness to women,’ said Beauchamp, eyeing him critically, and then thinking, with a sudden warmth, that he had seen Renee:  ’Look here, Palmet, you’re too late for Itchincope, to-day; come and eat fish and meat with me at my hotel, and come to a meeting after it.  You can run by rail to Itchincope to breakfast in the morning, and I may come with you.  You’ll hear one or two men speak well to-night.’

‘I suppose I shall have to be at this business myself some day,’ sighed Palmet.  ’Any women on the platform?  Oh, but political women!  And the Tories get the pick of the women.  No, I don’t think I ’ll stay.  Yes, I will; I’ll go through with it.  I like to be learning something.  You wouldn’t think it of me, Beauchamp, but I envy fellows at work.’

‘You might make a speech for me, Palmet.’

’No man better, my dear fellow, if it were proposing a toast to the poor devils and asking them to drink it.  But a dry speech, like leading them over the desert without a well to cheer them—­no oasis, as we used to call a five-pound note and a holiday—­I haven’t the heart for that.  Is your Miss Denham a Radical?’

Beauchamp asserted that he had not yet met a woman at all inclining in the direction of Radicalism.  ’I don’t call furies Radicals.  There may be women who think as well as feel; I don’t know them.’

’Lots of them, Beauchamp.  Take my word for it.  I do know women.  They haven’t a shift, nor a trick, I don’t know.  They’re as clear to me as glass.  I’ll wager your Miss Denham goes to the meetings.  Now, doesn’t she?  Of course she does.  And there couldn’t be a gallanter way of spending an evening, so I’ll try it.  Nothing to repent of next morning!  That’s to be said for politics, Beauchamp, and I confess I’m rather jealous of you.  A thoroughly good-looking girl who takes to a fellow for what he’s doing in the world, must have ideas of him precious different from the adoration of six feet three and a fine seat in the saddle.  I see that.  There’s Baskelett in the Blues; and if I were he I should detest my cuirass and helmet, for if he’s half as successful as he boasts—­it’s the uniform.’

Two notorious Radicals, Peter Molyneux and Samuel Killick, were called on.  The first saw Beauchamp and refused him; the second declined to see him.  He was amazed and staggered, but said little.

Among the remainder of the electors of Bevisham, roused that day to a sense of their independence by the summons of the candidates, only one man made himself conspicuous, by premising that he had two important questions to ask, and he trusted Commander Beauchamp to answer them unreservedly.  They were:  first, What is a French marquees? and second:  Who was EURYDICEY?