It meant that the Glenavelin household, including herself, would
be in a different camp for three dreary weeks, and that Mr. Stocks
would claim more of her society than ever. With feminine inconsistency
she visited her repugnance towards that gentleman on his innocent rival.
But Mr. Lewis Haystoun's light-hearted manner of regarding the business
struck the little Puritan deeper. Politics had always been a thing of
the gravest import in her eyes, bound up with a man's duty and honour
and religion, and lo! here was this Gallio who not only adorned a party
she had been led to regard as reprobate, but treated the whole affair as
a half-jocular business, on which one should not be serious. It was
sheer weakness, her heart cried out, the weakness of the philanderer,
the half-hearted. In her vexation her interest flew in sympathy to Mr.
Stocks, and she viewed him for the occasion with favour.
"You are far too frivolous about it," she cried. "How can you fight if
you are not in earnest, and how can you speak things you only half
believe? I hate to think of men playing at politics." And she had set
her little white teeth, and sat flushed and diffident, a Muse of
Protest.
Lewis flushed in turn. He recognized with pain the fulfilment of his
fears. He saw dismally how during the coming fight he would sink daily
in the estimation of this small critic, while his opponent would as
conspicuously rise.
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