ry speech
on the subject of Wharton, the echoes of whose fantastic talk, as it
seemed to him, were always hanging about Mellor when he went there. But
he did refrain, and was thankful. That he was indeed jealous and
disturbed, that he had been jealous and disturbed from the moment Harry
Wharton had set foot in Mellor, he himself knew quite well. But to play
the jealous part in public was more than the Raeburn pride could bear.
There was the dread, too, of defining the situation--of striking some
vulgar irrevocable note.

So he parried Marcella's exclamation by asking her whether she had any
idea how many human hands a parliamentary candidate had to shake between
breakfast and bed; and then, having so slipped into another tone, he
tried to amuse himself and her by some of the daily humours of the
contest. She lent herself to it and laughed, her look mostly turned away
from him, as though she were following the light of the carriage lamps
as it slipped along the snow-laden hedges, her hand lying limply in his.
But neither were really gay. His soreness of mind grew as in the pauses
of talk he came to realise more exactly the failure of the evening--of
his very successful and encouraging meeting--from his own private point
of view.

"Didn't you like that last speech?" he broke out suddenly--"that
labourer's speech? I thought you would. It was entirely his own
idea--nobody asked him to do it."

In reality Gairsley represented a corner of the estate which Aldous had
specially made his own. He had spent much labour and thought on the
improvement of what had been a backward district, and in particular he
had tried a small profit-sharing experiment upon a farm there which he
had taken into his own hands for the purpose. The experiment had met
with fair success, and the labourer in question, who was one of the
workers in it, had volunteered some approving remarks upon it at the
meeting.

"Oh! it was very proper and respectful!" said Marcella, hastily.

The carriage rolled on some yards before Aldous replied. Then he spoke
in a drier tone than he had ever yet used to her.

"You do it injustice, I think. The man is perfectly independent, and an
honest fellow. I was grateful to him for what he said."

"Of course, I am no judge!" cried Marcella, quickly--repentantly. "Why
did you ask me? I saw everything crooked, I suppose--it was your
Primrose Dames--they got upon my nerves. Why did you have them? I didn't
mean to vex and h