That was what Mr. Franklin Forrester’s analysis of the situation amounted to. It was not quite accurate; but there was something in it.
He had not expected the farmer’s daughter of Compton Elliot’s confidential report to have so pleasing a personality. He had rather visions of a stoutish young woman with an opulent bust and dark eyes, combined with a knowledge of how to use them. But the difference between his ideal and the real lady did not cause him to change the plan of attack which he had arranged for her capture.
“Now the murder’s out,” he said, looking not at Jack, but at Jack’s wife. “We want a good man who will make a good fight for Nuttingford, and we believe that we can hold the seat.”
“Then why the mischief didn’t you go to a good man?” enquired Jack.
Mr. Forrester smiled. He did not tell him that he had already approached two very good men; and that, being shrewd as well as good—politically good, which represents a condition that is possibly not quite the same as ethically good—they had shaken their heads and told him to go on to the next street.
No. Mr. Franklin Forrester regarded those communications as strictly confidential; he did not think it necessary to allude to them.
“I have come to the right man, if I know anything of the Nuttingford division,” was what he did say; “and I think I know something of the Nuttingford division,” he added.
“I don’t doubt it; but you don’t know quite so much about the man you’ve come to, or you wouldn’t have come,” suggested Jack. Then he glanced at his wife, and Mr. Forrester noted that glance with great interest.
“It’s because I know you, my friend, better than you know yourself—I won’t say better than Mrs. Wingfield knows you—that I have come to you,” said the politician. “You are the sort of man that we want—that the country wants.”
“Oh, I say, why drag in the poor old country by the hair of the head? It’s almost indecent,” remonstrated Jack, and once again he glanced at his wife. She smiled back at him, but spoke not a word. She was a wise woman. A wise woman is one who has a great deal to say and remains silent.