be friends yet when you have come to understand that you
are not so very, very much my superior."

CHAPTER XXVII

Lashmar walked hack to Hollingford, and reached the hotel without any
consciousness of the road by which he had come. He felt as tired as if
he had been walking all day. When he had dropped into an easy chair, he
let his arms hang, and, with head drooping forward, stared at his feet
stretched out before him: the posture suggested a man half overcome
with drink.

He had a private meeting to attend to-night. Should he attend it or
not? His situation had become farcical. Was it not his plain duty to
withdraw at once from the political contest, that a serious candidate
might as soon as possible take his place? Where could he discern even
the glimmer of a hope in this sudden darkness? His heart was heavy and
cold.

He went through the business of the evening, talking automatically,
seeing and hearing as in a dream. He had no longer the slightest faith
in his electioneering prospects, and wondered how he could ever have
been sanguine about them. Of course the Conservative would win.
Breakspeare knew it; every member of the committee knew it; they
pretended to hope because the contest amused and occupied them. No
Liberal had a chance at Hollingford. To-morrow he would throw the thing
up, and disappear. Never in his life had he passed such a miserable
night. At each waking from hag-ridden slumbers, the blackest
despondency beset him; once or twice his tortured brain even glanced
towards suicide; temptation lurking in the assurance that, by
destroying himself, he would become, for a few days at all events, the
subject of universal interest. He found no encouragement even in the
thought of Iris Woolstan. Not only had he deeply offended her by his
engagement to Constance Bride, but almost certainly she would hear from
her friend Mrs. Toplady the whole truth of his disaster, which put him
beyond hope of pardon. He owed her money; with what face, even if she
did not know the worst, could he go to her and ask for another loan? In
vain did he remember the many proofs he had received of Mrs. Woolstan's
devotion; since the interview with Constance, all belief in himself was
at an end. He had thought his eloquence, his personal magnetism,
irresistible; Constance had shown him the extent of his delusion. If he
saw Iris, the result would be the same.

At moments, so profound was his feeling of insignificance that