"Then I'm off to bow and smile!" she cried. As she went by she touched his hand again. "Thanks, Jimmy," she said.
Jimmy, left alone, stretched himself, sighed, and lit a cigar; they were nearly out of the wood now, and they had managed to play pretty fair. For his own sake he was glad, since he had been mixed up in the campaign; he had perception enough to be far more glad for May Quisanté's.
Through all the fever of that day the same gladness and relief were in her heart in a form a thousandfold more intense. They enabled her to do her bowing and smiling, to hope eagerly, to work unceasingly, to be gay and happy in the excitement of fighting and the prospect of victory. She could put aside the memory of Tom Sinnett; they had not been to blame; let that affair be set off against Smiley's hypothetical extension of the Recreation Ground. She felt that she could face people, above all that she could face the Mildmays when the time came for her to meet them at the declaration of the poll. And as regarded her husband she could do more than praise and more than admire; she could feel tenderness and a touch of remorse as she saw him battling against worse than the enemy, against a deadly weariness and weakness to which he would not yield. From to-morrow she determined to lay to heart the doctor's counsel, to try whether he could not be persuaded to stand a little coddling, whether he might not be brought to, if only she could persuade herself to show him more love. When she looked at the Mildmays she understood what had perhaps been in the doctor's mind; dear Lady Mildmay (she was a woman who immediately claimed that epithet with its expression of mingled affection and ridicule) no doubt overdid a little her pleasant part. She made Sir Winterton a trifle absurd. But then with what chivalry he faced and covered the touch of absurdity, or avoided it without offending the love that caused it! Very glad she was that, when Lady Mildmay asked to be introduced, she could clasp hands with the consciousness that her side had played fair, and by a delicate distant reference could honestly assure the enemy's wife that both she and her husband had looked with disfavour on that unpleasant episode.
She had known she would like Sir Winterton and was not disappointed; she saw that he was very favourably impressed by her, largely, no doubt, because she was handsome, even more because their ways of looking at things would be very much the same; they had the same pride and the same sensitiveness; in humour he was not her match, or he would not have ridden his high horse. She felt that he complimented her in begging her to make him known to Quisanté; and this office also she was able to perform with pleasure, because they had played fair. Hope was high in her that night, not merely for this contest, not merely now for her husband's career, but for her life and his, for her and him themselves. If her old fears had been proved wrong, if in face of temptation he had not yielded, if now by honourable means he had made good his footing, things might go better in the future, that constant terror vanish, and there be left only what she admired and what attracted her. For they had kept to the rules square enough; Quisanté had played fair.
She heard Sir Winterton tell him so in a friendly phrase, just touched with a pleasantly ornate pompousness; eagerly looking, she saw Quisanté accept the compliment just as he should, as a graceful tribute from an antagonist, as no more than his due from anyone who knew him. She smiled to think that she could write and tell Aunt Maria that Sandro was improving, that even his manners grew better and better as success gave him confidence, and confidence produced simplicity. Making a friendly group with their rivals in the ante-room, they were able to forget the little fretful man who paced up and down, carefully avoiding Sir Winterton's eye, but asserting by the obstinate pose of his head and the fierce pucker on his brow that he had done no more than his duty in asking a plain answer to a plain question, and that on Sir Winterton's head, not on his, lay the consequences of evasion.
Presently the group separated. The little heaps of paper on the long table in the inner room had grown from tens to hundreds; the end was near. Quisanté's agent stood motionless behind the clerks who counted, Jimmy Benyon looking over his shoulder eagerly. Smiley regarded the heaps for a moment or two and then walked across to Sir Winterton. Through the doorway May saw Sir Winterton bend his head, listen, nod, smile, and turn and whisper to his friends. At the next moment Jimmy Benyon came to the door, caught her eye, smiled, and nodded energetically. The presiding officer looked down the row of men counting to right and left. "Are you all agreed on your figures?" he asked. They exchanged papers, counted, whispered a little, recovered their own papers. "Yes," ran along the row, and the presiding officer pushed back his chair. In a single instant Quisanté was the centre of a throng of people shaking his hand, and everybody crowded into the inner room.
"How many?" asked Sir Winterton Mildmay.
"Forty-seven, Sir Winterton," answered Smiley.
So it was over, and Alexander Quisanté was again Member for Henstead. "Send somebody to tell Foster," May heard him say before he followed to the window from which the announcement was to be made. He was very pale and walked rather unsteadily. "Stay by Mr. Quisanté; I think he's not very well," she whispered to the agent. The next moment two of Sir Winterton's prominent supporters passed her; one spoke to the other half in a whisper. "That damned Sinnett business has done us," he said.
Her cheek flushed suddenly; it was horrible to think that. Still they had played fair, and it was no fault of theirs.