Mildred pondered long and sorrowfully that night over her friend's trouble.
She knew it was no fancied or exaggerated recital of wrongs. The inmates of the vicarage had commented openly on the Squire's changed looks and bearing. His cordiality had always savoured more or less of condescension, but latterly he had held himself aloof from his neighbours, and there had been a gloomy reserve in his manner that had made him well-nigh unapproachable.
Irritable and ready to take offence, and quick to resent even a difference of opinion, he was already on bad terms with more than one of his neighbours. Dr. Heriot's well-deserved popularity, and his plainness of speech, had already given umbrage to his jealous and haughty temperament. It was noticed on all sides that the Doctor was a less frequent visitor at Kirkleatham House, and that Mr. Trelawny was much given to carp at any expressed opinion that emanated from that source.
This was incomprehensible, to say the least of it, as he had always been on excellent terms with both father and daughter; but little did any one guess the real reason of so inexplicable a change.
Ethel was right when she acknowledged that ambition was her father's besetting sin; the petty interests of squirearchal life had never satiated his dominant passion and thirst for power. Side by side with his ambition, and narrow aims there was a vacuum that he would fain have filled with work of a broader type, and with a pertinacity that would have been noble but for its subtle egotism, he desired to sit among the senators of his people.
Twice had he essayed and twice been beaten, and it had been whispered that his hands were not quite clean, with the cleanness of a man to whom corruption is a hideous snare; and still, with a dogged resolution that ought to have served him, he determined that one day, and at all costs, his desire should be accomplished.
Already there were hints of a coming election, and whispered reports of a snug borough that would not be too severely contested; but Mr. Trelawny had another aim. The Conservative member for the next borough had given offence to his constituents by bringing in a Bill for the reformation of some dearly-loved abuse. The inhabitants were up in arms; there had been much speechifying and a procession, during which sundry well-meaning flatterers had already whispered that the right man in the right place would be a certain lord of beeves and country squire, to whom the township and people were as dear as though he had first drawn breath in their midst.
Parliament would shortly be dissolved, it was urged, and Mr. Trelawny's chances would be great; already his friends were canvassing on his behalf, and among them Mr. Cathcart, of Broadlands.
The Cathcarts were bankers and the most influential people, and commanded a great number of votes, and it was Edgar Cathcart who had used such strong language against the aforesaid member for meddling with an abuse which had been suffered for at least two hundred years, and was respectable for its very antiquity.