"Don't be so sure! He has given me untold help in the drafting of my Bill. If I didn't call myself a Conservative, he would vote for me to-morrow. That's the absurdity of it. Do you know, I hear them coming back?"
"One thing," she said hastily, drawing him towards her, and then holding him back, as though shrinking always from the feeling she could so readily evoke. "I must say it; you oughtn't to give me so much money, it is too much. Suppose I use it for things you don't like?"
"You won't," he said gaily.
She tried to push the subject further, but he would not have it.
"I am all for free discussion," he said in the same tone; "but sometimes debate must be stifled. I am going to stifle it!"
And stooping, he kissed her, lightly, tremulously. His manner showed her once more what she was to him—how sacred, how beloved. First it touched and shook her; then she sprang up with a sudden disagreeable sense of moral disadvantage—inferiority—coming she knew not whence, and undoing for the moment all that buoyant consciousness of playing the magnanimous, disinterested part which had possessed her throughout the talk in the drawing-room.
The others reappeared, headed by their lamp: Wharton first, scanning the two who had lingered behind, with his curious eyes, so blue and brilliant under the white forehead and the curls.
"We have been making the wildest shots at your ancestors, Miss Boyce," he said. "Frank professed to know everything about the pictures, and turned out to know nothing. I shall ask for some special coaching to-morrow morning. May I engage you—ten o'clock?"
Marcella made some evasive answer, and they all sauntered back to the drawing-room.
"Shall you be at work to-morrow, Raeburn?" said Wharton.