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Updated: September 15, 2025
Dyce approached, and spoke to Constance. A few moments afterwards, Lord Dymchurch rose, bowed, and withdrew; whereupon Lashmar asked Miss Tomalin's permission to take the vacant chair. It was granted rather absently; for the girl's eyes had furtively followed her late companion as he moved away, and she seemed more disposed to reflect than to begin a new conversation.
After a moment's reflection, he decided to go to the hotel, and there write a note. Whilst he was having lunch, the reply came, a dry missive, saying that, if he would call at three o'clock, Mrs. Woolstan would have much pleasure in presenting him to her friends the Barkers, with whom she was spending the day. Lashmar fumed, but obeyed the invitation.
Lash mar behaved like a man of honour, and I quite approve of the way in which he expressed himself. His words would have been perfectly intelligible even to Miss Tomalin. Admitting his right to withdraw from the engagement if he had conscientious objections to it, I ventured to ask Mr. Lashmar whether there was any particular reason for his wish to be released.
Didn't your father let you know of the shocking revelation I made to him the other day?" "He told me nothing at all." Constance reflected. "Probably he thought it too painful. Mrs. Shufflebotham keeps a little shop, and sells cakes and sweetmeats. Does it distress you?" Distress was not the applicable word, for Lashmar had no deep interest in Constance or her belongings.
On his way hither, Lashmar had imagined quite a different meeting; he anticipated an emotional scene, beginning with forced calm on Constance's side, leading OR to reproaches, explanations, and masculine triumph. But Constance was strangely self-possessed, and her mind seemed to be not at all occupied with agitating subjects.
"How you have altered!" He kept gazing at her, with a certain awe. "I hardly know you." "I doubt whether you know me at all. Never mind." She held out her hand. "We may be friends yet when you have come to understand that you are not so very, very much my superior." Lashmar walked hack to Hollingford, and reached the hotel without any consciousness of the road by which he had come.
He answered to the name of Dyce Lashmar, and fell under the general description of charlatan. Not for a moment had Mrs. Toplady been in doubt as to this classification; but Dyce Lashmar was not quite an ordinary charlatan, and seemed to be worth the observing.
Dyce, holding his place near the entrance, perceived at length another face that he knew that of a lady with whom he had recently dined at this house; in her company came Constance Bride and May Tomalin. He all but bounded to meet them. Constance looked well in a garb more ornate than Lashmar had yet seen her wearing; May, glowing with self-satisfaction, made a brilliant appearance.
You have the satisfaction of knowing that you got more votes than any Liberal has done at Hollingford for many years so the papers tell me. In fact, you have made a very good start indeed, and I am sure the eye of the party will be on you." Lashmar glowed. He had not expected such words from Mrs. Toplady. After all, Iris had given him good advice.
Until eight months ago he had never earned enough money to think of marrying; and, at thirty-two, he told himself that he was not a marrying man; but more than once in the early hours of triumph he had thought of Agnes and of his own return to Lashmar; they had often talked jestingly of the day when he would come back famous, and behind the jest lay a hint of romance and sentiment which told him that she was waiting for him and believed in his success when he himself doubted it.
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