Now, at last Mrs. Rebell was coming towards him from the porch; he saw that she looked, if not happier, more at peace than she had done before going into the Priory, yet her eyelids were swollen, and if victorious she seemed one whose victory has cost her dear.
As she led the way down the broad grass drive, she began to talk of indifferent matters, making what O'Flaherty felt was rather a pitiful, and yet a gallant attempt to speak of things which might interest him.
Suddenly they touched on politics, "My father," Barbara's face softened, became less mask-like, "cared so much about English politics. As a young man he actually stood for Parliament, for in those days Halnakeham had a member, but he was defeated. I have sometimes thought, since I have heard Mr. Berwick and Mr. Boringdon talk—I don't know if you have met Mr. Boringdon—how different everything might have been if my poor father had been elected. He only lost the seat by thirty votes."
When she mentioned Berwick, the colour had flooded her face, and O'Flaherty had looked away. "Oh yes, I've met Oliver Boringdon," he said quickly, and to give her time to recover herself he went on, "I remember him in the House. But I had the luck to get in again, and he was thrown out, at the last General Election. The two friends are an interesting contrast. I regard James Berwick as the typical Parliament man; not so Mr. Boringdon, who is much more the permanent official, the plodding civil servant—that was what he was originally, you know—and Berwick did him a bad turn in taking him away from that career and putting him into Parliament."
"But you do think well of Mr. Berwick? I mean, do you consider, as does his sister, that he has a great future before him?"
She looked at her companion in undisguised anxiety, and O'Flaherty felt rather touched by the confidence Barbara evidently reposed in his judgment.
"I think," he said—and he offered up a mental prayer that he might so speak as to help, not hinder, the woman by his side—"that James Berwick's future will depend on the way he shapes his life. Do not think me priggish—but the one thing that seems to me sure is that character still tells more than ability in English public life. Character and ability together are apt to prove irresistible."
"But what," asked Barbara in a low voice, "do you exactly mean by character?"
"I mean something which Oliver Boringdon possesses to a supreme degree—a number of qualities which together make it positively more difficult for a man to go wrong than to go right, especially in any matter affecting his honour or probity."
"Then—surely you regard Mr. Berwick as a man of character?"