rsuasive speaking for Alston. He
thought he could rake in all Madame Beattie's contingent, now that she
was away, still leaving them so friendly. But he was dull and
absent-minded. Esther's going had been a defeat another braver, cleverer
man, he believed, need not have suffered. At Lydia he had hardly looked
since the day of Esther's going. To them all he was a closed book,
tight-lipped, a mask of brooding care. Lydia thought she understood. He
was raging over what he might have done. Nothing was going to make Lydia
rage, she determined. She had settled down into the even swing of her
one task: to help him out, to watch him, above all, whatever the
emergency, to be ready.

Once, when Jeff was trying to drag his flagging energies into election
work again, he met Andrea, and stopped to say he would be down at Mill
End that night. But Andrea seemed, while keeping his old fealty,
betokened by shining eyes and the most open smiles, to care very little
about him in a political capacity. He even soothingly suggested that he
should not come. Better not, Andrea said. Too much work for nothing.
They knew already what to do. They understood.

"Understand what?" Jeff asked him.

They had been told before the signora went, said Andrea. She had
explained it all. They would vote, every man of them. They knew how.

"It's easy enough to learn how," said Jeff impatiently. "The thing is to
vote for the right man. That's what I'm coming down for."

Andrea backed away, deferentially implying that Jeff would be most
welcome always, but that it was a pity he should be put to so much
pains. And he did go, and found only a few scattering listeners. The
others, he learned afterward, were peaceably at a singing club of their
own. They had not, Jeff thought, with mortification, considered him of
enough importance to listen to.

Weedon Moore, in these last days, seemed to be scoring; at least
circumstance gave him his own head and he was much in evidence. He spoke
a great deal, flamboyantly, on the wrongs suffered by labour, and his
own consecration to the holy joy of righting them. He spoke in English
wholly, because Andrea, with picturesque misery, had regretted his own
inability to interpret. Andrea's throat hurt him now, he said. He had
been forbidden to interpret any more. Weedie mourned the defection of
Andrea. It had, he felt, made a difference, not only in the size but the
responsiveness of his audiences. Sometimes he even felt they