Isabel laughed. "And your love for your own side is equally enjoyable. I assure you I feel the most fervent glow of affection for all the Liberals in Chayford—just as if they were relations and it was Christmas Day."
"Yet all the time you know that these feelings will completely die out within a week of the declaration of the poll!" added Joanna.
"Of course you do; that is why they are so delightful. Feelings that last, take a good deal out of you I have discovered; the really delicious sort are those that you think will last for ever and that you know won't," said Isabel.
"I am afraid, my dear girl, that you are becoming an epicure in emotions," remarked Paul, who had just come in.
"I know I am; an election, supervening on a love-affair, is enough to intoxicate any woman, especially when the beloved object and the candidate are one. You can't think what glorious thrills I have all down my back when the crowds applaud you. Liberalism and love combined so overwhelm my soul that I feel you are the only man in the whole world, and the English nation rolled into one; and I am as tearful as if people were singing 'God Save the Queen' and 'Auld Robin Gray' at the same time. Oh! it is a delicious feeling, and I am eternally grateful to you for giving it to me."
Paul beamed with delight, but, being a man, did not say pretty things before a third person; Isabel, being a woman, did.
"I adore elections," she continued, waltzing round the room, "they are simply heavenly!"
"A general election and my idea of heaven are by no means synonymous," replied her lover quietly.
"My idea of heaven is pretty much the same as Beatrice's," Isabel said; "I shall go 'where the bachelors sit, and there live as merry as the day is long'. I shall say, 'Please reserve the place next to Mr. Paul Seaton for me'; and if I find it already occupied, there will be unpleasantness, and I shall contest the seat."
"You are very brilliant to-day." And Paul looked at her proudly. She was worth looking at just then, as she had dressed herself entirely in blue, the Liberal colour in Chayford; and a woman always looks her best when her gown is of the same shade as her eyes.