There was a kind
of chivalry in the placing of certain forms of beauty--
political honour and public devotion, which blossomed
best, it seemed, over there--above the material ease and
margin of the new country, and even above the grand chance
it offered for a man to make his mark. Mr Murchison was
susceptible to this in anyone, and responsive to it in
his son.
As to the local party leaders, they had little more than
a shrug for the subject. So far as they were concerned,
there was no Empire and no Idea; Wallingham might as well
not have been born. It seemed to Lorne that they maintained
toward him personally a special reticence about it.
Reticence indeed characterized their behaviour generally
during the period between the abandonment of the suits
and the arrangement of the second Liberal convention.
They had little advice for him about his political
attitude, little advice about anything. He noticed that
his presence on one or two occasions seemed to embarrass
them, and that his arrival would sometimes have a
disintegrating effect upon a group in the post-office or
at a street corner. He added it, without thinking, to
his general heaviness; they held it a good deal against
him, he supposed, to have reduced their proud standing
majority to a beggarly two figures; he didn't blame them.
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