"Do you mean that I could accomplish all this in such a short time?" he asked. "To be perfectly frank, the prospect of the task dismays me. He 'd be sure to resent the attempt."
"Not he," she answered with conviction. "He 'd be grateful for such support as yours. He 's really an awfully nice fellow, and I think you 'd find him rather interesting."
"I don't doubt it for a minute," he assured her. "But how am I to make his acquaintance in the first place?"
She considered the question awhile. "Just tell him I thought you would like to know each other. That would make it perfectly easy and natural."
Leigh could not fail to see that this method was the best, if the thing were to be done at all. She could not bring them together socially, and a note of introduction would be too formal. Doubtless the man looked up to her as his patroness, and would accept anything from her with something of feudal loyalty.
"I might meet him casually,—on purpose,—and if we happened to like each other and began to talk about politics"— The sentence dwindled into a dubious smile.
"Do," she urged. "I really think you could influence him for good."
Leigh was less sure of it, and the other two men returned before he had committed himself to a plan that seemed, even when seen under her influence, to be little short of quixotic.
During the walk home he tried Cardington on the subject of Emmet, but found him uncommunicative, almost brusque, in his reticence. Leigh suspected that the subject might be a sore one with him, and that he thoroughly disapproved of Miss Wycliffe's odd charity. When a talker is silent, his silence has the tactile quality of Egyptian darkness, and so it now appeared in Cardington. Concerning Miss Wycliffe herself they made no comment, doubtless because they were thinking of her so intently. Leigh reviewed every moment he had passed in her company, recalling each look and word. He was impressed now, more than he had been at the time, with the intensity of her interest in the election, and it occurred to him that to do as she desired, or at least to attempt it, would establish a claim upon her regard. This was his opportunity. If he desired to win her favour, he must regard her wish as mandatory. How much he desired to win it he did not try to conceal from himself.
His frankness extended even farther. When he recalled that it was the bishop and not his daughter who had shown humanity at the wedding, he was impressed by her curious insensibility. It seemed to him peculiarly feminine to take an interest in such a scene, and most of the women he knew would have looked on with tremulous sympathy. Was this mere instinctive selfishness on her part? If he vaguely condemned her attitude in this matter, he appreciated her father's conduct the more by contrast. Somehow he guessed that the bishop did not altogether like him, but he felt that no matter what the future might bring forth in their relationship, he could never forget that charming episode. The bishop was a true aristocrat, he reflected, more inclined to be haughty to his equals than to his inferiors. Doubtless Emmet, had he been content with that station of life in which it had pleased God to place him, would have found no more affable acquaintance than Bishop Wycliffe.