tailor. "I
can answer for twenty or thirty votes in my neighbourhood--"

"I am greatly obliged to you, Mr. Bingham," Dyce replied, in his
suavest tone. "We have a hard fight before us, but if I find many
adherents such as you--"

The tailor went away and declared to all his acquaintances that if they
wished their borough to be represented by a _gentleman_, they had only
to vote for the Liberal candidate.

As a matter of policy, Dyce had allowed it to be supposed that he was a
man of substantial means. With the members of his committee he talked
in a large way whenever pecuniary matters came up. Every day someone
dined with him at the hotel, and the little dinners were as good as the
Saracen's Head could furnish special wines had been procured for his
table. Of course the landlord made such facts commonly known, and the
whole establishment bowed low before this important guest. All day long
the name of Mr. Lashmar sounded in bar and parlour, in coffee-room and
commercial-room. Never had Dyce known such delicious thrills of
self-respect as under the roof of this comfortable hostelry. If he were
elected, he would retain rooms, in permanence, at the hotel.--Unless,
of course, destiny made his home at Rivenoak.

Curiosity as to what was going on at the great house kept him in a
feverish state during these days before the funeral. Breakspeare, whom
he saw frequently, supposed him to be in constant communication with
Rivenoak, and at times hinted a desire for news, but Lashmar's cue was
a dignified silence, which seemed to conceal things of high moment. Sir
William and Lady Amys he knew to be still in the house of mourning; he
presumed that May Tomalin had not gone away, and it taxed his
imagination to picture the terms on which she lived with Constance. At
the funeral, no doubt, he would see them both; probably would have to
exchange words with them--an embarrassing necessity.

Hollingford, of course, was full of gossip about the dead woman. The
old, old scandal occupied tongues malicious or charitable. Rivenoak
domestics had spread the news of the marble bust, to which some of them
attached a superstitious significance; Breakspeare heard, and credited,
a rumour that the bust dated from the time when its original led a
brilliant, abandoned life in the artist world of London; but naturally
he could not speak of this with Lashmar. Highly imaginative stories,
too, went about concerning Miss Tomalin, whom everyone assumed t