It was surprising, indeed, how easily, as the weeks went on, he came to bear many of those ways of hers which had once set him most on edge—even her absurd outbursts of affection towards him, and preposterous praise of him in public. In time he submitted even to being flown at and kissed before the Fullertons. Amazing into what new relations that simple perspective of the end will throw all the stuff of life!
* * * * *
In Parliament the weeks rushed by. The first and comparatively non-contentious sections of the Bill passed with a good deal of talk and delay. George spoke once or twice, without expecting to speak, instinctively pleasing Fontenoy where he could. They had now but little direct intercourse. But George did not feel that his leader had become his enemy, and was not slow to recognise a magnanimity he had not foreseen. Yet, after all, he had not offered the worst affront to party discipline. Fontenoy could still count on his vote. As to the rest of his party, he saw that he was to be finally reckoned as a "crank," and let alone. It was not, he found, altogether to be regretted. The position gave him a new freedom of speech.
Meanwhile he and Marcella Maxwell rarely met. Week after week passed, and still Tressady avoided those gatherings at the Mile End house, of which he heard full accounts from Edward Watton. He once formally asked Letty if she would go with him to one of Lady Maxwell's East End "evenings," and she, with equal formality, refused. But he did not take advantage of her refusal to go himself. Was it fear of his own weakness, or compunction towards Letty, or the mere dread of being betrayed into something at once ridiculous and irreparable?
At the same time, it was surprising how often during these weeks he had occasion to pass through St. James's Square. Once or twice he saw her go out or come in, and sometimes was near enough to catch the sudden smile and look which surely must be the smile and look she gave her friends, and not to every passing stranger! Once or twice, also, he met her for a few minutes in the Lobby, or on the Terrace, but always in a crowd. She never repeated her invitation. He divined that she was, perhaps, vexed with herself for having seemed to press the point on the night of the second reading.
* * * * *
July drew to an end. The famous "workshop clause" had been debated for nearly ten days, the whole country, as it were, joining in. One evening in the last week of the month Naseby and Lady Madeleine were sitting together in a corner of a vast drawing-room in Carlton House Terrace. The drawing-room was Mrs. Allison's. She had returned about a fortnight before from Bad Wildheim, and was now making an effort, for the boy's sake, to see some society. As she moved about the room in her black silk and lace she was more gentle, but in a sense more inaccessible, than ever. She talked with everyone, but her eyes followed her son's auburn head, with its strange upstanding tufts of hair above the fair, freckled face; or they watched the door, even when she was most animated. She looked ill and thin, and the many friends who loved her would have gladly clung about her and cherished her. But it was not easy to cherish Mrs. Allison.
"Do you see how our hostess keeps a watch for Fontenoy?" said Naseby, in a low voice, to Lady Madeleine.
Madeleine turned her startled face to him. Nature had given her this hunted look—the slightly open mouth, the wide eyes of one who perpetually hears or expects bad news. Naseby did not like it, and had tried to laugh her out of her scared ways before this. But he had no sooner laughed at her than he found himself busy—to use Watton's word—in "stroking" and making it up to her, so tender and clinging was the girl's whole nature, so golden was her hair, so white her skin!
"Isn't it the division news she is expecting?"