"Exactly so. By-the-by—I've resigned my candidateship."
"Resigned? Why?"
"Oh, I'm sick of the thing! One has to be such a humbug to secure one's votes. I had a wretched time yesterday,—speechifying and trying to rouse up clodhoppers to the interests of their country,—and all the time my darling at home was alone, and breaking her heart about me! By Jove! if I'd only known! When I came back this morning to all this misery—I told Neville to send in my resignation. I repeated the same thing to him the last thing before I left the house."
"But you might have waited a day or two," said Lorimer wonderingly. "You're such a fellow of impulse, Phil—"
"Well, I can't help it. I'm tired of politics. I began with a will, fancying that every member of the house had his country's interests at heart,—not a bit of it! They're all for themselves—most of them, at any rate—they're not even sincere in their efforts to do good to the population. And it's all very well to stick up for the aristocracy; but why, in Heaven's name, can't some of the wealthiest among them do as much as our old Mac is doing, for the outcast and miserable poor? I see some real usefulness and good in his work, and I'll help him in it with a will—when—when Thelma comes back."
Thus talking, the two friends reached the Garrick Club, where they found Beau Lovelace in the reading-room, turning over some new books with the curious smiling air of one who believes there can be nothing original under the sun, and that all literature is mere repetition. He greeted them cheerfully.
"Come out of here," he said. "Come into a place where we can talk. There's an old fellow over there who's ready to murder any member who even whispers. We won't excite his angry passions. You know we're all literature-mongers here,—we've each got our own little particular stall where we sort our goods—our mouldy oranges, sour apples, and indigestible nuts,—and we polish them up to look tempting to the public. It's a great business, and we can't bear to be looked at while we're turning our apples with the best side outwards, and boiling our oranges to make them swell and seem big! We like to do our humbug in silence and alone."
He led the way into the smoking-room—and there heard with much surprise and a great deal of concern the story of Thelma's flight.
"Ingenuous boy!" he said kindly, clapping Philip on the shoulder. "How could you be such a fool as to think that repeated visits to Violet Vere, no matter on what business, would not bring the dogs of scandal yelping about your heels! I wonder you didn't see how you were compromising yourself!"
"He never told me a word about it," interposed Lorimer, "or else I should have given him a bit of my mind on the subject."