(Mrs. Mountcalm-Villiers enters, as usual in a flutter of excitement.)
Mrs. Mountcalm-Villiers. Am I late?
(They brush her back into silence. Elizabeth takes charge of her.)
Annys. (She has risen.) You think it wise tactics, to make it impossible for Geoffrey to be anything else in the future but our enemy?
Lady Mogton. (Contemptuously.) You are thinking of him, and not of the cause.
Annys. And if I were! Haven’t I made sacrifice enough?—more than any of you will ever know. Ay—and would make more, if I felt it was demanded of me. I don’t! (Her burst of anger is finished. She turns, smiling.) I’m much more cunning than you think. There will be other elections we shall want to fight. With the Under-Secretary for Home Affairs in sympathy with us, the Government will find it difficult to interfere. Don’t you see how clever I am?
(Jawbones, having received his instructions from Phoebe, has slipped out unobserved. He has beckoned to Ginger; she has followed him. Phoebe has joined the group.)
Mrs. Mountcalm-Villiers. There’s something in that.
Janet. Is Mr. Chilvers still in sympathy with us?
Phoebe. Of course he is. A bit rubbed up the wrong way just at present; that’s our fault. When Annys goes down, early next mouth, to fight the Exchange Division of Manchester, we shall have him with us.