Moreover, when we come in, they will
represent the strongest element in the party, with the future in
their hands."
Lady Lucy looked at him with sparkling eyes.
"You can't desert him, Oliver!--not you!"
"Perhaps I'd better drop out of Parliament!" he said, impatiently. "The
game sometimes doesn't seem worth the candle."
Lady Lucy--alarmed--laid a hand on his.
"Don't say those things, Oliver. You know you have never done so well as
this year."
"Yes--up to two months ago."
His mother withdrew her hand. She perfectly understood. Oliver often
allowed himself allusions of this kind, and the relations of mother and
son were not thereby improved.
Silence reigned for a few minutes. With a hand that shook slightly, Lady
Lucy drew toward her a small piece of knitting she had been occupied
with when Marsham came in, and resumed it. Meanwhile there flashed
through his mind one of those recollections that are only apparently
incongruous. He was thinking of a dinner-party which his mother had
given the night before; a vast dinner of twenty people; all well-fed,
prosperous, moderately distinguished, and, in his opinion, less than
moderately amused.
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