frowned so scornfully.

"If," said he, "I could persuade Sir Winterton to give Mr. Quisante a
private assurance that the scandal is entirely baseless, would Mr.
Quisante state publicly that he was convinced of its falsity and did not
wish it to influence the electors in any way?"

"Perhaps he would," said Jimmy.

"I think it would be only the proper thing for him to do," said the Dean
rather warmly.

"I don't know about that. Why can't Mildmay say it for himself? But I'll
ask Quisante, if you like."

The Dean was only too conscious of the weakness of his cause; he became
humble again in thanking Jimmy for this small promise. "And Mr.
Quisante'll be glad to have done it, I know, whatever the issue of the
fight may be," he ended. The remark received for answer no more than a
smile from Jimmy. Jimmy was not sure that among the stress of emotions
filling Quisante's heart in case of defeat there would be room for any
consoling consciousness of moral rectitude. Perhaps Jimmy himself would
not care much about such a solatium. He wanted to win and he wanted
Quisante to win; such was the effect of being much with Quisante; and in
this matter at least, so far as Jimmy's knowledge went, his champion had
acted with perfect correctness. At other times Jimmy might have been, like
Sir Winterton, apt to exact something a little beyond correctness, but now
the spirit of the fight was on him.

The Dean returned with the rather scanty results of his mission, and after
luncheon took his courage in both hands and told Sir Winterton what he had
done. But for his years and his station, Sir Winterton would, at the first
blush, have called him impertinent; the Dean divined the suppressed
epithet and defended himself with skill, but, alas, not without verging on
the confines of truth. To say that he had happened to meet Jimmy Benyon
was to give less than its due credit to his own ingenuity; to say that
Jimmy and he had agreed on the proper thing was rather to interpret than
to record Jimmy's brief and not very sanguine utterances. However the
Dean's motive was very good, and before the meal ended Sir Winterton
forgave him, while still sternly negativing the course which his diplomacy
suggested. In fact Sir Winterton was very hard to manage; the Dean
understood the Quisante position better and better; Mrs. Baxter gave up
her efforts; she had an almost exaggerated belief in the inutility of
braying fools in a mortar; she was content to sho