Meanwhile Falloden talked very frankly of the family circumstances and his own plans. How changed the tone was since they had discussed the same things, riding through the Lathom Woods in June! There was little less self-confidence, perhaps; but the quality of it was not the same. Instead of alienating, it began to touch and thrill her. And her heart could not help its sudden tremor when he spoke of wintering “in or near Oxford.” There was apparently a Merton prize fellowship in December on which his hopes were set, and the first part of his bar examination to read for, whether he got a fellowship or no.
“And Parliament?” she asked him.
“Yes—that’s my aim,” he said quietly. “Of course it’s the fashion just now, especially in Oxford, to scoff at politics and the House of Commons. It’s like the ‘art-for-arters’ in town. As if you could solve anything by words—or paints!”
“Your father was in the House for some time?”
She bent towards him, as she mentioned his father, with a lovely unconscious gesture that sent a tremor through him. He seemed to perceive all that shaken feeling in her mind to which she found it so impossible to give expression; on which his own action had placed so strong a curb.
He replied that his father had been in Parliament for some twelve years, and had been a Tory Whip part of the time. Then he paused, his eyes on the grass, till he raised them to say abruptly:
“You heard about it all—from Radowitz?”
She nodded.
“He came here that same night.” And then suddenly, in the golden light, he saw her flush vividly. Had she realised that what she had said implied a good deal?—or might be thought to imply it? Why should Radowitz take the trouble, after his long and exhausting experience, to come round by the Scarfedale manor-house?
“It was an awful time for him,” he said, his eyes on hers. “It was very strange that he should be there.”