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Updated: June 27, 2025
He spoke at last: "She looks like a lady. I know nothing else about her." The smile deepened round Miltoun's mouth. "Why should you want to know anything else?" Lord Valleys shrugged. His philosophy had hardened. "I understand for one thing," he said coldly; "that there is a matter of a divorce. I thought you took the Church's view on that subject." "She has not done wrong."
"My dear," she murmured, "you underestimate three-quarters, at the very least!" But Lord Valleys, confronted with danger, was growing steadier. "It passes my comprehension;" he said, "why you should want to mix up sex and politics at all." Miltoun's answer came very slowly, as if the confession were hurting his lips: "There is forgive me for using the word such a thing as one's religion.
They spoke of Monk-land, and Miltoun's illness; of his first speech, his impressions of the House of Commons; of music, Barbara, Courtier, the river. He told her of his health, and described his days down by the sea.
This queer dry saying was so much more terrible than any outcry, that she remained, deprived even of the power of breathing, with her eyes still fixed on Miltoun's face. The smile of the old Cardinal had come up there, and was to her like a living accusation.
"Is there anything I can do to stop the harm to you?" It was the turn of Miltoun's lips to curl. "God! no; let them talk!" Their eyes had come together now, and, once together, seemed unable to part. Mrs. Noel said at last: "Will you ever forgive me?" "What for it was my fault." "No; I should have known you better."
Unmoved by the stares of the audience, Barbara sat absorbed in moody thoughts. Into the three weeks since Miltoun's election there had been crowded such a multitude of functions that she had found, as it were, no time, no energy to know where she stood with herself. Since that morning in the stable, when he had watched her with the horse Hal, Harbinger had seemed to live only to be close to her.
Thus isolated, he was like a solitary cuckoo contemplating the gyrations of a flock of rooks. Their motions seemed a little meaningless to one so far removed from all the fetishes and shibboleths of Westminster. He heard them discussing Miltoun's speech, the real significance of which apparently had only just been grasped.
In a very high, white-panelled room, with but little furniture, Lord Valleys greeted his mother-in-law respectfully. "Motored up in nine hours, Ma'am not bad going." "I am glad you came. When is Miltoun's election?" "On the twenty-ninth." "Pity! He should be away from Monkland, with that anonymous woman living there." "Ah! yes; you've heard of her!"
Miltoun's apprenticeship to the profession of politics was served in a slum settlement; on his father's estates; in Chambers at the Temple; in expeditions to Germany, America, and the British Colonies; in work at elections; and in two forlorn hopes to capture a constituency which could be trusted not to change its principles.
Once in Nepal, where he had gone to shoot, he had passed a month quite happily with only a Ghoorka servant who could speak no English. To those who asked him if he had not been horribly bored, he had always answered: "Not a bit; did a lot of thinking." With Miltoun's trouble he had the professional sympathy of a brother and the natural intolerance of a confirmed bachelor.
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