nt, in the placid existence of a recognised
invalid he might live years, indeed probably would; but otherwise the
authorities declined to promise him any life at all. His body had played
him false in the end. Constantine Blair began to look out for a candidate
for Henstead and to wonder whether Sir Winterton would again expose
himself to the unpleasantness of a contested election; Lady Castlefort
must find another Prime Minister, the fighting men another champion, even
the Alethea Printing Press Limited a new chairman. The places he had
filled or made himself heir to were open to other occupants and fresh
pretenders. That the change seemed so considerable proved how great a
figure he had become in men's eyes no less than how utterly his career
was overthrown. The comments on his public life were very flattering, but
already they praised in the tone of an obituary notice, and the hopes
they expressed of his being able some day to return to the arena were
well understood to be no more than a kind or polite refusal to display
naked truth in the merciless clearness of print.

Here was the state of things which extorted from Morewood the blunt wish
that Quisante might die. Such a desire was hardly cruel to the man
himself, since he must now lose all that he had loved best in the market
of the world; but it was not the man himself who had been most in
Morewood's thoughts. With a penetration sharpened by the memory of his
blunder he had appreciated the perverse calamity which had fallen on the
man's wife, and had passed swiftly to the conclusion that for her an end
by death was the only chance, the only turn of events which could give
back to her the chance of a real life to be lived. He knew by what
Quisante had attracted and held her; all that, it seemed, was gone now.
He divined also in what Quisante repelled and almost terrified her; that
would remain so long as breath was in the man and might grow even more
intense. A sense of fairness somehow impelled him to his wish; her
bargain had turned out so badly; the underlying basis of her marriage was
broken; she was left to pay the price to the last penny, but was to get
nothing of what she had looked to purchase. Was it not then the part of a
courageous man to face his instinctive wish, and to accept it boldly?
Cant and tradition apart, it must be the wish of every sensible person.
For she knew, she had realised most completely on the very evening when
Quisante was struck down