THE decision had been finally concluded by the members of the South Marchshire Executive Committee that Gabriel Strong, Esq., of The Friary, Saltire, should contest the constituency under Unionist colors at the next election. The government had long been in a ruinous condition, and an appeal to the electorate was imminent, according to the political prophets. Now Rilchester, the premier town in South Marchshire, was one of those intensely patriotic boroughs where political popularity depends largely on the number of guineas squandered by any prospective candidate in the patronage of local charities and local trade. The Rilchester electors were men of sense; they could not stomach a member from whose pockets there came no prophetic clink of gold. John Strong, hard-headed gamester, had contrived to create for himself a certain reputation in the place as a philanthropist and a benevolent patron of sport and pleasure. He had endowed beds at the hospital; he feasted the fisherfolk regularly each summer; he had subscribed with American prodigality to the founding of the working-men’s club. He had even provided the Rilchester rowing club with a racing eight for Moberly regatta. His money had been invested with lavish and consummate care to popularize the name of Strong. The ex-tea merchant already beheld his son a prophetic Pitt, stirring the noble enthusiasm of an empire, carving for himself a sacred niche in the golden fane of history. Gabriel had been instructed in the subtle art of political fascination. He had attended at flower-shows and all social crushes, smiled and chatted to individuals of every shade and temper, shaken hands with mediocrities on every possible occasion, posed perpetually as an amiable, genial, and cultured young aristocrat. He was quite the Galahad of the Primrose Dames. Artistically attired, with an orchid in his button-hole, he presented himself at all functions of importance, culling possible votes by the magic of a pleasant personality. The public gayeties that his father had forced upon him had in some measure distracted Gabriel from the melancholy realities of his marriage. With his usual amiable apathy, he acted as ever as the paid vassal of his father; his very household existed as a proof of his dependence on the parental favor. Moreover, there was a certain artificial stimulus in political life that pleased him for a season. He met pretty women who flattered him, mediocre folk who were “proud to make his acquaintance,” big-wigs who were willing to listen to his opinions and to nod approval when some apt phrase promised well for the spirit of debate. He had been something of an orator at Oxford, where his humanism had partaken of a Mazzinian flavor. Expediency, however, had warped his none too tough convictions into the deformed orthodoxy he was supposed to champion. His father’s ambition, also, generous as it was, promised to shed a glamour of ease over the common actualities of life.