“You don’t object to my listening to criticism of you?”

“Not by Humphrey Crewe,” laughed Mr. Flint.

Early suppers instead of dinners were the rule at Leith on the evening of the historic day, and the candidate himself, in his red Leviathan, was not inconsiderably annoyed, on the way to Ripton, by innumerable carryalls and traps filled with brightly gowned recruits of that organization of Mrs. Pomfret’s which Beatrice Chillingham had nicknamed “The Ladies’ Auxiliary.”.  In vain Mr. Crewe tooted his horn:  the sound of it was drowned by the gay talk and laughter in the carryalls, and shrieks ensued when the Leviathan cut by with only six inches to spare, and the candidate turned and addressed the drivers in language more forceful than polite, and told the ladies they acted as if they were going to a Punch-and-Judy show.

“Poor dear Humphrey!” said, Mrs. Pomfret, “is so much in earnest.  I wouldn’t give a snap for a man without a temper.”

“Poor dear Humphrey” said Beatrice Chillingham, in an undertone to her neighbour, “is exceedingly rude and ungrateful.  That’s what I think.”

The occupants of one vehicle heard the horn, and sought the top of a grassy mound to let the Leviathan go by.  And the Leviathan, with characteristic contrariness, stopped.

“Hello,” said Mr. Crewe, with a pull at his cap.  “I intended to be on the lookout for you.”

“That is very thoughtful, Humphrey, considering how many things you have to be on the lookout for this evening,” Victoria replied.

“That’s all right,” was Mr. Crewe’s gracious reply.  “I knew you’d be sufficiently broad-minded to come, and I hope you won’t take offence at certain remarks I think it my duty to make.”

“Don’t let my presence affect you,” she answered, smiling; “I have come prepared for anything.”

“I’ll tell Tooting to give you a good seat,” he called back, as he started onward.

Hastings Weare looked up at her, with laughter-brimming eyes.

“Victoria, you’re a wonder!” he remarked.  “Say, do you remember that tall fellow we met at Humphrey’s party, Austen Vane?”

Yes.”

“I saw him on the street in Ripton the other day, and he came right up and spoke to me.  He hadn’t forgotten my name.  Now, he’d be my notion of a candidate.  He makes you feel as if your presence in the world meant something to him.”

“I think he does feel that way,” replied Victoria.

“I don’t blame him if he feels that way about you,” said Hastings, who made love openly.

“Hastings,” she answered, “when you get a little older, you will learn to confine yourself to your own opinions.”

“When I do,” he retorted audaciously, “they never make you blush like that.”

“It’s probably because you have never learned to be original,” she replied.  But Hastings had been set to thinking.