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Updated: June 6, 2025
The swift yet calm decision of her manner completed Maxwell's bewilderment. His eyes sought hers, while the others waited, conscious, somehow, of a dramatic moment. Fontenoy's flash of malicious curiosity made him even forget, while it lasted, the little tragic figure on the sofa. "What do you say, Cousin Charlotte?" said Maxwell at last. His voice was dry and business-like.
"We saw a fair representative lot." The thought that flashed through Fontenoy's mind was, "Why the deuce didn't you speak of it to me?" Aloud, he said with impatience: "Representing what Everard chose to show, I should think. However, what I want is this. You know the series of extracts from reports that has been going on lately in the 'Chronicle." George nodded.
What he was really suffering from was an impatience of new conditions perhaps surprise that he was not more equal to them. Till his return home till now, almost he had been an employer and a coal-owner by proxy. Other people had worked for him, had solved his problems for him. Then a transient impulse had driven him home made him accept Fontenoy's offer worse luck! at least, Letty apart!
He tore to pieces Fontenoy's elaborate attack, showed what practical men thought of the clause, and with what careful reliance upon their opinion and their experience it had been framed; and, finally with a reference not lacking in a veiled passion that told upon the House, to those "dim toiling thousands" whose lot, "as it comes to work upon the mind, is daily perplexing if not transforming the thoughts and ideals of such men as I" he, in the plainest terms, announced his intention of voting with the Government, and sat down, amid the usual mingled storm, in a shouting and excited House.
George stayed to hear the official defence to its end. Then he hurried upstairs in search of Letty, who, with Miss Tulloch, was in the Speaker's private gallery. As he went he thought of Fontenoy's speech, its halting opening, the savage force of its peroration. His pulses tingled: "Magnificent!" he said to himself; "magnificent! We have found a man!"
Allison, with vexation, but she did not know how to stop the stream. In truth, since she had given Lord Fontenoy leave to invite Harding Watton she had had time to forget the invitation, and she was sorry now to think of his housing with the Maxwells. For Watton had been recently Lord Fontenoy's henchman and agent in a newspaper attack upon the Bill, and upon Maxwell personally, that even Mrs.
Subsequently, at most race-meetings, large and small, and at various clubs, theatres, and places of public resort, the younger man had had his opportunities of observing the elder, and had used them always with relish, and sometimes with admiration. He himself had no desire to follow in Fontenoy's footsteps. Other elements ruled in him, which drew him other ways.
All the persons concerned with matches and white-lead, with certain chemical or metal-working industries, with "season" dressmaking or tailoring, were up in arms, rallying to Fontenoy's support with loud wrath and lamentations, claiming to speak not only for themselves, but for their "hands," in the angry protest that things had gone and were going a great deal too far, that trade was simply being harassed out of the country.
So that she found herself talking to him with a new formality, in the tone of those who have been friends, yet begin to foresee the time when they may be antagonists. Or, again, it was Fontenoy Fontenoy's great head and overhanging brows, thrown suddenly into light against the windy dusk.
And he gave her a summary of his after-dinner conversation with Lord Cathedine, a keen ally of Fontenoy's in the Lords, and none the less a shrewd fellow because he happened to be also a detestable person. Marcella heard the news of one or two fresh defections from the Government with amazement and indignation.
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