Lee was with him in the lobby when he received the congratulations of men many years older than himself, and the next morning she brought all the newspapers, and pasted the highly laudatory articles on the rising sun into a scrap-book. She cunningly persuaded him to be photographed, and as his reputation waxed she supplied the weekly papers with his distinguished profile. He was moved to wrath, but his wife’s fervid admiration was very sweet to him, and when she pleaded it as her excuse for taking a step without consulting him, he forgave her instantly.
They could not get away in time for a trip abroad that year, much to Lee’s disappointment; for the Continent was one vast romantic ruin to her, varied with shops and the picturesque costumes of peasants. The late summer and autumn and early winter were precisely like the summer and autumn and early winter of the year before. They entertained the same people, visited the same houses; and this time Lee had the novel feeling of amazement for a people who were just as much pleased and just as absorbed as if a benign Providence had gifted them with the instinct for variety.
“No wonder they are great,” she thought, with a sigh.
In January the London maisonnette was open again, and as gay as flowers and upholstery and lamp shades could make it. Cecil for some time past had meditated a Bill for the relief of certain manufacturers, and had worked at it on odd days during the recess. He introduced it, and it failed, for it was practically a demand for the exclusion of much that was “made in Germany,” and was regarded as a covert and audacious attack on Free Trade. His Speech in its behalf was the most brilliant he had yet made, and he was bitterly denounced by the Liberal and Radical press next morning. Nor did their attentions cease with their comments on his Bill and Speech. From that time on he was regarded by the Opposition as a man to be sneered into the cooler regions of private life. His constituency was warned by that section of its press whose principles he did not represent, and he was accused of having pledged his abilities, “such as they were,” to a life-long fight against progress, and of a criminal indifference to Home Rule and to the unfortunate Armenian.
Of these jeremiads—which Cecil refused to read, having made up his mind and being at peace with his conscience—Lee was as proud as of the many compliments which the young member received, and she pasted them dutifully in the scrap-book. Of Society she saw something less than ever, although her mother-in-law adjured her not to “make a fool of herself.” She admitted that she should like to go to some of the great parties, and to an occasional supper at the Savoy, under Lady Barnstaple’s wing; for her evenings were lonely, and politics would have been even more interesting if seasoned with variety. She asked Cecil, with an apologetic blush, if he would mind.
He plunged his hands into his pockets.
“Are you very keen on it?” he asked.
“Oh, I’m not mad about it, but I haven’t seen much of London Society, and it interests me; and I have so much time on my hands.”
“I’m afraid you must get rather bored. I’m sorry I have to be so much away from you. But—I hate to see women running about without their husbands. Besides it’s always the beginning of the end—when a woman goes her way and a man his. It’s selfish of me, but I like to think of you as always here. As you know, I break away sometimes, and come home unexpectedly——”
“You haven’t this year.”