He helped her into the hansom, got in himself and placed her little bag at their feet. The hansom turned up the hill. She waited for him to speak.
"Nelly has found out that she made a mistake," he said quietly. "Her heart was not given to me, but to a Captain Langrishe of her father's old regiment. News has come that he has been badly wounded, so badly that in all probability he is dead by this time. He had exchanged into an Indian regiment, and almost as soon as he got out he was sent into the hills on the business of this wretched little war. Those conquests of ours, what they cost us! Why should we have all those thousands of miles of frontiers to defend? Why can't we stay at home and let the territories be for their own people?"
She smiled quietly to herself in the corner of the cab. The sudden excursion into politics was so characteristic of him.
The wind of the summer night came cool and friendly in their faces. The blue heaven was studded with stars. A little half-moon hung above the quiet shadows of the square through which they were passing. For the stillness they might have been miles away from London.
"What a Don Quixote you are!" she said. "I believe you would cede India if you had your way."
"I believe I should. Don't you wonder at me, Miss Gray? My forbears devoted their existence chiefly to extending the boundaries of the British Empire. Am I not their degenerate descendant?"
"Oh, you're a fighting man in other ways. You don't mind facing a hostile audience and saying unpalatable things to them. Mr. Ilbert says you'll have to fight for your seat at the next election."
"I wouldn't be bothered with a seat I hadn't to fight for. All the same, I'm obliged to Ilbert for his interest in my affairs. Do you know that he referred to me as a Little Englander the other night, as though there were only one way of loving one's country and that to rob other people of theirs?"
His tone was an offended one. The name of Ilbert seemed to have power to irritate him. He resented the idea that Ilbert had talked to Mary of him, disparaged him; he supposed she saw Ilbert often. The idea was exceedingly distasteful to him.
"He has the highest opinion of your honesty and capacity, your patriotism too," Mary said.