CHAPTER VII.
Wharton was sitting alone in the big Mellor drawing-room, after dinner.
He had drawn one of the few easy chairs the room possessed to the fire, and with his feet on the fender, and one of Mr.Boyce's French novels on his knee, he was intensely enjoying a moment of physical ease.

The work of these weeks of canvassing and speaking had been arduous, and he was naturally indolent.

Now, beside this fire and at a distance, it amazed him that any motive whatever, public or private, should ever have been strong enough to take him out through the mire on these winter nights to spout himself hoarse to a parcel of rustics.

"What did I do it for ?" he asked himself; "what am I going to do it for again to-morrow ?" Ten o'clock.

Mr.Boyce was gone to bed.