he
either held for honest fanatics or despised as flatterers of the
mob--ignobly pliant. He could and would fight them all with good courage
and fair hope of victory.

But Lucy Marsham's son!--that defection, realized or threatened, was
beginning now to hit him hard. Amid all their disagreements of the past
year his pride had always refused to believe that Marsham could
ultimately make common cause with the party dissenters. Ferrier had
hardly been able to bring himself, indeed, to take the disagreements
seriously. There was a secret impatience, perhaps even a secret
arrogance, in his feeling. A young man whom he had watched from his
babyhood, had put into Parliament, and led and trained there!--that he
should take this hostile and harassing line, with threat of worse, was a
matter too sore and intimate to be talked about. He did not mean to talk
about it. To Lady Lucy he never spoke of Oliver's opinions, except in a
half-jesting way; to other people he did not speak of them at all.
Ferrier's affections were deep and silent. He had not found it possible
to love the mother without loving the son--had played, indeed, a
father's part to him since Henry Marsham's death. He knew the brilliant,
flawed, unstable, attractive fellow through and through. But his
knowledge left him still vulnerable. He thought little of Oliver's
political capacity; and, for all his affection, had no great admiration
for his character. Yet Oliver had power to cause him pain of a kind that
no other of his Parliamentary associates possessed.

The letters of that morning had brought him news of an important meeting
in Marsham's constituency, in which his leadership had been for the
first time openly and vehemently attacked. Marsham had not been present
at the meeting, and Lady Lucy had written, eagerly declaring that he
could not have prevented it and had no responsibility. But could the
thing have been done within his own borders without, at least, a tacit
connivance on his part?

The incident had awakened a peculiarly strong feeling in the elder man,
because during the early days of the recess he had written a series of
letters to Marsham on the disputed matters that were dividing the party;
letters intended not only to recall Marsham's own allegiance,
but--through him--to reach two of the leading dissidents--Lankester and
Barton--in particular, for whom he felt a strong personal respect
and regard.

These letters were now a cause of anxiety t