I'm sure they're a
great, great deal better than they were twenty years ago!" Lady Lucy's
voice was almost piteous. "However, he very nearly persuaded the miners
to run a candidate of their own, and when that fell through, he advised
them to abstain from voting. And they must have done so--in several
villages. That's pulled down the majority."
"Abominable!" said Bobbie, who was comfortably conservative. "I always
said that man was a firebrand."
"I don't know what he expects to get by it," said Lady Lucy, slowly, as
she moved toward the door. Her tone was curiously helpless; she was
still stately, but it was a ghostly and pallid stateliness.
"Get by it!" sneered Lady Niton. "After all, his friends are in. They
say he's eloquent. His jackasseries will get him a bishopric in
time--you'll see."
"It was the unkindness--the ill-feeling--I minded," said Lady Lucy, in a
low voice, leaning heavily upon her stick, and looking straight before
her as though she inwardly recalled some of the incidents of the
election. "I never knew anything like it before."
Lady Niton lifted her eyebrows--not finding a suitable response. Did
Lucy really not understand what was the matter?--that her beloved Oliver
had earned the reputation throughout the division of a man who can
propose to a charming girl, and then desert her for money, at the moment
when the tragic blow of her life had fallen upon her?--and she, that of
the mercenary mother who had forced him into it.
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