He was interrupted by the entrance of his daughter and Norburn. They were troubled, as a glance at their happy faces told him, by no sense of the end of things; they were at the beginning, and he was amused to find that, while they deplored his defeat sincerely and resented it hotly, it yet had a bright side to them. It set Jack Norburn at liberty; he had now no official ties and there would be a lull in politics. How should two young people use such an interval better than in getting married?
"How indeed?" said Mr. Medland, smiling.
"Then when we're comfortably married," said Daisy, "and you've had a little rest, we'll have at Sir Robert again, father! Oh, and I'm so glad those tiresome Eynesfords are going—except Alicia, I mean; I like her. I do hope the next people won't be quite so—" And Daisy's gesture indicated the inhuman exclusiveness and pride supposed to be harboured at Government House.
"Well, we go our way and they go theirs," said Norburn, with his good-humoured laugh. "We're happy in ours, I hope they're happy in theirs. Then, as soon as Daisy can be ready, sir?"
"Yes, as soon as Daisy can be ready," assented Medland.
When, after thanks and some more rose-coloured prophecies, they were gone together, he rose and, hands in pockets, paced up and down the narrow room.
"Really, young Norburn has got the philosophy of it," he mused. "He takes my daughter, and his philosophy takes the only other woman I care about! But I believe, after all, that it's bad philosophy."
He stretched his arms in weariness.
"Ah, I feel burnt out!" he said, sinking back into his chair. "I must answer this," and he took up Alicia's note again, only to fold it up and put it in his pocket.