With his rasping voice, shaking his glasses at her, Sir William continued for some minutes to inform Pauline of the movements of those of his patients who were of political prominence. They were his patients of that class uneasily dispersing over the face of the country, opening bazaars, bowling the first balls of cricket-seasons, devising acts of graciousness all night, putting them into practice all day, and perpetually shaking hands that soiled their delicate gloves. For that particular world was full of the whispered words “General Election.” When it was coming no one seemed to know, for the Prime Minister with his amiable inscrutability very reasonably distrusted the great majority of his followers. This disconcerted innumerable hostesses, for no one knew when they wouldn’t have to pack up bag and baggage and bolt like so many rabbits back to their burrows. This febrile condition gave occupation of a secretarial kind to great numbers of sleek and smooth-haired young gentlemen, but it was very hard upon the London tradesman. It was, Robert Grimshaw was thinking, very hard upon Pauline, too. He couldn’t be absolutely certain what she meant to do in case the General Election came before Dudley could make some sort of appearance in the neighbourhood of Cove Park. In the conversations that he had had with her they had taken it for tacitly understood that he was to be well--or at least that he was to be well enough for Pauline to run him herself. But supposing it was to be a matter of some years, or even of some months? What was Pauline thinking of when she thought of the General Election that hung over them? Mustn’t it add to her suspense? And he wondered what she meant to do. Would she simply stick Leicester in bed and give it out that he had a temporary illness, and run the election off her own bat? She had already run Leicester down in their car all over the country roads, going dead slow and smiling at the cottagers. And there wasn’t much chance of the other side putting up a candidate.... Between his feet Peter was uttering little bubbles of dissatisfaction whenever Sir William spoke, as if his harsh voice caused the small dog the most acute nervous tension. Grimshaw whistled in a whisper to keep the animal quiet. “All these details,” Grimshaw thought, Pauline had all these details to attend to, an incessant vigilance, a fierce determination to keep her end up, and to do it in silence and loneliness. He imagined her to be quivering with anxiety, to be filled with fear. He _knew_ her to be all this. But Sir William, having ceased to impart his social information, turned his brows upon his patient, and Pauline came from the back room to sit down opposite him by the fireplace. And all she had to say was: “These coals really are very poor!”