"Will you excuse the remark? There are no women who keep their first freshness like Englishwomen."
"Thank you. If we feel fresh, I suppose we look it. As for you, you clearly want a rest."
"No time to think of it, then; I have come home to fight—all I know; to make myself as odious as possible."
Mary laughed.
"You have been doing that so long. Why not try the opposite?"
Cliffe looked at her sharply.
"You think I have made a failure of it?"
"Not at all. You have made everybody furiously uncomfortable, and you see how civil even the Radical papers are to you."
"Yes. What fools!" said Cliffe, shortly. "They'll soon leave that off. Just now I'm a stick to beat the government with. But you don't believe I shall carry my point?"
The point concerned a particular detail in a pending negotiation with the United States. Cliffe had been denouncing the government for what he conceived to be their coming retreat before American demands. America, according to him, had been playing the bully; and English interests were being betrayed.