Of Mr. Sullivan’s private affairs, she knew nothing. Nor of his ambitions. Amongst his friends—and he had friends!—he was not adjudged an ambitious man. He kept modestly out of the Press, and appeared in Hansard only often enough to satisfy his rather easygoing constituents. He never gave interviews. Interviews, he had observed, had an unpleasant way of rising to condemn one. It was safer not to espouse a cause, for then one could not be accused of inconstancy when one disavowed it.
This reticence on the part of Mr. Sullivan was variously regarded as humility towards those of superior wisdom, and an almost extinct distaste for publicity. There were many who thought that save for a certain moral obliquity, Mr. Sullivan was a very fine man!
But Azalea distrusted him. With the feminine shrewdness that is really a manifestation of Bergsonian intuition, she saw his modesty as caution, and naturally inferred that caution is only necessary when one has something to conceal. The fact that he never declared himself definitely upon any stand, made her suspicious of his enthusiastic support of Dilling. Azalea sensed treachery behind it.
Scattered bits of gossip, an odd suggestion dropped here and there, unremarked at the time, rose now to the surface of her mind, and strengthened her case against Rufus Sullivan. Besides, had not Lady Denby hinted that Sir Eric was not unqualifiedly pleased at the championship of the Hon. Member for Morroway? That, in itself, was cause for apprehension.
So far as Azalea knew, Mr. Sullivan had never denounced Eastlake and Donahue, nor had he uttered any anti-Imperialistic shibboleths, but she simply could not bring herself to accept his attitude as sincere, and something warned her that this sudden flare of patriotism served an ignoble end.
What, she asked herself, could he gain by putting Dilling in a position of honour and importance?
Bribery was unthinkable, but might it not be that he sought some higher honour for himself, some post which could be more easily acquired by a friend at court than by personal application?
“That’s stupid,” thought Azalea, “for the man has hosts of influential friends, who, though hesitating to introduce him to their wives and daughters, would exert no end of energy to gratify a political whim. There must be something else . . .”
She drew in her breath sharply.
What if animosity towards Dilling, and not friendship, or even self-interest, had prompted this extraordinary act of Mr. Sullivan’s!