into the chair proper to him when he has anything to communicate, on the opposite side of the Baronet’s little newspaper-table. Sir Leicester is apprehensive that my Lady, not being very well, will take cold at that open window. My Lady is obliged to him, but would rather sit there for the air. Sir Leicester rises, adjusts her scarf about her, and returns to his seat. Mr. Tulkinghorn in the meanwhile takes a pinch of snuff.
“Now,” says Sir Leicester. “How has that contest gone?”
“Oh, hollow from the beginning. Not a chance. They have brought in both their people. You are beaten out of all reason. Three to one.”
It is a part of Mr. Tulkinghorn’s policy and mastery to have no political opinions; indeed, no opinions. Therefore he says “you” are beaten, and not “we.”
Sir Leicester is majestically wroth. Volumnia never heard of such a thing. The debilitated cousin holds that it’s sort of thing that’s sure tapn slongs votes—giv’n—Mob.
“It’s the place, you know,” Mr. Tulkinghorn goes on to say in the fast-increasing darkness when there is silence again, “where they wanted to put up Mrs. Rouncewell’s son.”
“A proposal which, as you correctly informed me at the time, he had the becoming taste and perception,” observes Sir Leicester, “to decline. I cannot say that I by any means approve of the sentiments expressed by Mr. Rouncewell when he was here for some half-hour in this room, but there was a sense of propriety in his decision which I am glad to acknowledge.”
“Ha!” says Mr. Tulkinghorn. “It did not prevent him from being very active in this election, though.”