Yet how ridiculous! What
reasonable man, knowing what money means, and the power of it, but must
have flinched a little under such a test as had been offered to him? His
flinching had been nothing final or damnable. It was Diana, who, in her
ignorance of the world, had expected him to take the sacrifice as though
it were nothing and meant nothing--as no honest man of the world, in
fact, could have taken it.
* * * * *
When Marsham descended he found Alicia already in possession of the
drawing-room. Her gown of a brilliant shade of blue put the room out of
joint, and beside the startling effect of her hair, all the washed-out
decoration and conventional ornament which it contained made a worse
effect than usual. There was nothing conventional or effaced about
Alicia. She had become steadily more emphatic, more triumphant, more
self-confident.
"Well, what have you been doing with yourself?--nothing but politics?"
The careless, provocative smile with which the words were accomplished
roused a kind of instant antagonism in Marsham.
"Nothing--nothing, at least, worth anybody's remembering."
"You spoke at Dunscombe last week.
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