She was silent in a way that made their talk more of a discussion than if she had spoken. “What is behind them?” she presently asked.
“Why, my whole political history. Everything I’ve said, everything I’ve done. My scorching addresses and letters, reproduced in all the papers. I needn’t go into details, but I’m a pure, passionate, pledged Radical.”
Mrs. Gracedew looked him full in the face. “Well, what if you are?”
He broke into mirth at her tone. “Simply this—that I can’t therefore, from one day to the other, pop up at Gossage in the purple pomp of the opposite camp. There’s a want of transition. It may be timid of me—it may be abject. But I can’t.”
If she was not yet prepared to contest she was still less prepared to surrender it, and she confined herself for the instant to smoothing down with her foot the corner of an old rug. “Have you thought very much about it?”
He was vague. “About what?”
“About what Mr. Prodmore wants you to do.”
He flushed up. “Oh, then, you know it’s he?”
“I’m not,” she said, still gravely enough, “of an intelligence absolutely infantile.”
“You’re the cleverest Tory I’ve ever met!” he laughed. “I didn’t mean to mention my friend’s name, but since you’ve done so——!” He gave up with a shrug his scruple.