“I do not understand you,” he said, with a certain hauteur in his tone and a look of pain in his eyes. She raised hers to his and looked him full in the face. “It is not difficult to understand. You look on these pocket boroughs as a flagrant abuse, and yet you are willing to profit by that abuse. It is just the old story over again. You are willing to do evil that good may come, Eustace. I do not think that good ever does come when men have stooped to employ unworthy means. Take care you do not ruin your own cause by making that mistake all through.” Yes, it was the same girl he had left--the same Bride--the mystic, the impracticable woman of dreams and theories. Beautiful ideals are so plausible till you come to try and apply them to the sordid realities of life--and then how untenable they become! But how was she to know that, living in this old-world spot and in a dreamland of her own? So he stifled his irritation and answered very patiently-- “You hardly understand, Bride. Your father will have to nominate a member at this election, though probably for the last time. The abuse is yet unredressed, and cannot be redressed till honest men who love their country combine to blot it out. I wish to have the honour and privilege of being among that number; and I am your father’s next of kin, and the man it would be most natural for him to appoint. It lies here; he must either give it to a man who would fight against the good cause, though he would accept the seat without a qualm, or it must go to one like myself, who, recognising the thing as a manifest outrage upon constitutional representation, yet for this last time would take advantage of a pernicious system in order to hurl it down for ever more. I hold that mine is the right position to hold. If I were to stand aside for a man who would take the seat and strive to hold back the cause of reform, I should be a traitor to the cause and to my country. I ought not to stand idly by without striving to win it for myself.” She made no reply; but her silence was not the silence of assent, and he knew it. He took one or two turns upon the terrace and then said-- “Why do you always try to take the heart out of me, Bride? I never speak with you, but it is always the same old story. You look like one of God’s angels from heaven; you talk like a veritable saint upon earth; and yet you stand there as it were opposed to every effort to raise and bless and benefit humanity--a champion for what is tyrannous and oppressive and hateful!” It was not often that Eustace was carried away by his ardour in this fashion; but the excitement through which he had recently been passing had somewhat shaken and unnerved him. Bride looked away from him and out over the sea with one of those intense gazes of hers which calmed him better than any words could have done. He came up and took her hand, which she did not withdraw from his clasp.