There had been a little mystery about the candidate on the whig side, some uncertain bringing forward and withdrawal of suitable men, and Lady Bell had been ten days at Peasmarsh before she was aware of who was her husband’s opponent. The enlightenment broke upon Lady Bell suddenly, and with a little shock. Her course in driving one day was interrupted by the rival course of another chariot, with a similar train of friends and foes. In the chariot sat the handsome young lady whom Lady Bell had first seen in church, but the lady’s young husband had not left her to brave a street mob alone, he was seated beside her. Mrs. Sundon’s fine face was pointed keenly for contest. Mr. Sundon looked almost animated and alive—as people seldom saw him look—not beside the real prize of his life, the beautiful, witty, wealthy woman who had elected him, against all hostile representations, her husband, but only in a tavern over the last bottle, when brawls were impending and blood was ready to flow, over cards and dice, in a dog-fight or a cock-pit, on a race-ground. One need not condemn that man alone—there were hundreds and thousands of men like him, desperately jaded, mind and body, with the springs of life poisoned early, who might have been capable of higher and better things. The couple were swift to recognise Lady Bell’s position, as she recognised theirs, and to show her what had become the courtesy of foes. It touched her all the more when she recalled it, after she had happened to see from her window Mr. Trevor’s encounter with Mr. Sundon in the market-place. In return for the grace of Mr. Sundon’s punctilious bow, Squire Trevor had vouchsafed only a savage scowl. Into the house of one of the voters Lady Bell walked on the heels of Mrs. Sundon, going her rounds on a similar errand, so that the two ladies had nearly jostled each other in the doorway. But the elder lady gave way to the younger, before Lady Bell, in her agitation, could think of what she ought to do. “The place is yours, Lady Bell Trevor,” said a sweet, sonorous voice, with a shade of emphasis on the Lady Bell. Then, as if regretting even that slightly ungracious inference, Mrs. Sundon added, “I am happy to yield it to you; ladies need not quarrel though gentlemen contest seats in Parliament;” finally, she remarked with a still franker, more winning cordiality, “I think that you and I should not quarrel, Lady Bell.” “I think not, madam,” sighed Lady Bell, in a troubled fashion, conscious, with no ignoble envy, that Mrs. Sundon was her superior in manners as well as in years. “If I don’t have a care,” reflected Lady Bell in alarm, and with the crude unmincing expression of opinion which belonged to her years and her generation, “I’ll soon be as great a brute as Trevor.”