nd took her in his arms.

"Sleeping quietly, darling--so must you!"

She sank back on her pillows, his arm still round her.

"I was there an hour ago," she murmured. "I shall soon wake up--"

But for the moment she was asleep again, her fair head lying against his
shoulder. He sat down beside her, supporting her. Suddenly, as he looked
down upon her with mingled passion, tenderness, and pain, a sharp
perception assailed him. How thin she was--a mere feather's weight! The
face was smaller than ever--the hands skin and bone! Margaret French had
once or twice bade him notice this, had spoken with anxiety. He bent
over his wife and observed her attentively. It was merely the effect of
a hot summer, surely, and of a constant nervous fatigue? He would take
her abroad for a fortnight in September, if his official work would let
him, and perhaps leave her in north Italy, or Switzerland, with Margaret
French.

* * * * *

The great day was half-way through, and the throng in Haggart Park and
grounds was at its height. A flower-show in the morning; then a tenants'
dinner with a speech from Ashe; and now, in a marquee erected for the
occasion, Lord Parham was addressing his supporters in the county.
Around him on the platform sat the Whig gentry, the Radical
manufacturers, the town wire-pullers and local agents on whom a great
party depended; in front of him stretched a crowded meeting drawn in
almost equal parts from the coal-mining districts to the north of
Haggart and from the agricultural districts to the south....

The August air was stifling; perspiration shone on the broad brows and
cheeks of the farmers sitting in the front half of the audience; Lord
Parham's gray face was almost white; his harsh voice labored against the
acoustic difficulties of the tent; effort and heat, discomfort and ennui
breathed from the packed benches, and from the short-necked,
large-headed figure of the Premier.

Ashe sat to the speaker's right, outwardly attentive, inwardly ashamed
of his party and his chief. He himself belonged to a new generation, for
whom formulae that had satisfied their fathers were empty and dead. But
with these formulas Lord Parham was stuffed. A man of average intriguing
ability, he had been raised, at a moment of transition, to the place he
held, by a consummate command of all the meaner arts of compromise and
management, no less than by an invaluable power of playing to the
galler