A few busy and eventful weeks, days never forgotten by Marcella in after years, passed quickly by.

Parliament met in the third week of January.
Ministers, according to universal expectation, found themselves confronted by a damaging amendment on the Address, and were defeated by a small majority.

A dissolution and appeal to the country followed immediately, and the meetings and speech-makings, already active throughout the constituencies, were carried forward with redoubled energy.

In the Tudley End division, Aldous Raeburn was fighting a somewhat younger opponent of the same country-gentleman stock--a former fag indeed of his at Eton--whose zeal and fluency gave him plenty to do.
Under ordinary circumstances Aldous would have thrown himself with all his heart and mind into a contest which involved for him the most stimulating of possibilities, personal and public.

But, as these days went over, he found his appetite for the struggle flagging, and was harassed rather than spurred by his adversary's activity.