Lee coloured and lifted her chin in a manner which even a father-in-law must find charming. “I could have one if I liked—and that quite satisfies me, thank you.”
“I’m sorry you can’t go out more, though,” he said tentatively. “You are young and admired, and of course you like what women call pleasure.”
“I don’t care a rap about it,” she said with emphasis. “I am sure one hard London season would bore me to death.”
“Quite so. Quite so. It’s just a beastly grind, nothing more. You’re really far better off in the way you have chosen. I am glad to see you so happy. Cecil is certainly a lucky dog.”
“You gave me some good advice that day.” She smiled brilliantly into his watchful eyes.
“Oh, you were quite clever enough to have arrived at the same conclusions without my help. Of course if you had wanted a flashing career of your own, or had been a silly woman, greedy for admiration and intrigue, it would have been a different matter—a terribly different matter for Cecil. But you wanted happiness, and there is only one way to get it.”
CHAPTER XI
IT was not long before Cecil’s abilities were recognised. Something was expected of him, for he came of a line of able Parliamentarians; and as he was already famous as a sportsman, he commanded an interest by no means inspired by the average young man of an illustrious house.
When the time came for him to make his first speech, shortly before the end of the Session, Lee sat in the gallery with an icy exterior surrounding a furious nerve storm. The day was dark and depressing. Those long rows of faces had never looked more apathetic; it was enough to make a novice feel, as he rose and confronted the bored old veterans, that he was on trial for his life. If Cecil failed Lee felt that she could hate him, not because the world would curl its lip, but because Cecil, mortified, stammering, a failure, would be an ideal in collapse. She might oust these unworthy sentiments later, and sympathise with him in his distress, but she could never quite rehabilitate him. He might be defeated in the most significant climaxes of his career, his party might turn upon and rend him, and she would pour all the wealth of her nature at his feet, but if he made a fool of himself, she’d never forgive him.
But Cecil had no intention of making a fool of himself. Moreover, his training at Oxford, when the Union had rung with his salad eloquence, made itself manifest among the other foundations of his mind and character. He was neither nervous nor too diffident. In fact he opened so easily that Lee thrilled with pride and excoriated herself. When he got his first “Hear!” her knees jerked; she realised how excited she was, and glanced about the gallery hastily; but in that dim cage she had little to fear. He demanded the attention of the House for something over an hour, and he would have scorned to amuse it; but his speech was terse and packed with his own thought; it had not a platitude in it, nor a time-honoured sentiment. He might or might not become a brilliant speaker when he had acquired sufficient practice and confidence to let himself go, but that he was a Maundrell to be reckoned with had been conceded long before he sat down.