Mr. Barton, the Socialist member, and Oliver Marsham.
Diana had entirely forgotten herself, her shyness, the strange house,
and all her alarms. If Lady Niton took nothing for granted at Tallyn,
that was not, it seemed, the case with John Barton. He, on the contrary,
took it for granted that everybody there was at least a good Radical,
and as stoutly opposed as himself to the "wild-cat" and "Jingo" policy
of the Government on the Indian frontier, where one of our perennial
little wars was then proceeding. News had arrived that afternoon of an
indecisive engagement, in which the lives of three English officers and
some fifty men of a Sikh regiment had been lost. Mr. Barton, in taking
up the evening paper, lying beside Diana, which contained the news, had
made very much the remark foretold by Captain Roughsedge in the
afternoon. It was, he thought, a pity the repulse had not been more
decisive--so as to show all the world into what a hornet's nest the
Government was going--"and a hornet's nest which will cost us half a
million to take before we've done."

Diana's cheeks flamed. Did Mr. Barton mean to regret that no more
English lives had been lost?

Mr. Barton was of opinion that if the defeat had been a bit worse,
bloodshed might have been saved in the end. A Jingo Viceroy and a Jingo
press could only be stopped by disaster--

On the contrary, said Diana, we could not afford to be stopped by
disaster. Disaster must be retrieved.

Mr. Barton asked her--why? Were we never to admit that we were in the
wrong?

The Viceroy and his advisers, she declared, were not likely to be wrong.
And prestige had to be maintained.

At the word "prestige" the rugged face of the Labor member grew
contemptuous and a little angry. He dealt with it as he was accustomed
to deal with it in Socialist meetings or in Parliament. His touch in
doing so was neither light nor conciliatory; the young lady, he thought,
required plain speaking.

But so far from intimidating the young lady, he found in the course of a
few more thrusts and parries that he had roused a by no means despicable
antagonist. Diana was a mere mouth-piece; but she was the mouth-piece of
eye-witnesses; whereas Barton was the mouth-piece of his daily newspaper
and a handful of partisan books written to please the political section
to which he belonged.

He began to stumble and to make mistakes--gross elementary mistakes in
geography and fact--and there-with to lose his tempe