It was just toward the close of the dinner-hour that Marsham caught the Speaker's eye. Perhaps the special effort that had been necessary to recall his thoughts to the point had given his nerves a stimulus. At any rate, he spoke unusually well, and sat down amid the cheers of his party, conscious that he had advanced his Parliamentary career. A good many congratulations reached him during the evening; he "drank delight of battle with his peers," for the division went well, and when he left the House at one o'clock in the morning it was in a mood of tingling exhilaration, and with a sense of heightened powers. It was not till he reached his own room, in his mother's hushed and darkened house, that he opened Diana's letter. The mere sight of it, as he drew it out of his pocket, jarred upon him strangely. It recalled to him the fears and discomforts, the sense of sudden misfortune and of ugly associations, which had been, for a time, obliterated in the stress and interest of politics. He opened it almost reluctantly, wondering at himself. "MY DEAR OLIVER,--This letter from your mother reached me last night. I don't know what to say, though I have thought for many hours. I ought not to do you this great injury; that seems plain to me. Yet, then, I think of all you said to me, and I feel you must decide. You must do what is best for your future and your career; and I shall never blame you, _whatever_ you think right. I wish I had known, or realized, the whole truth about your mother when you were still here. It was my stupidity. "I have no claim--none--against what is best for you. Just two words, Oliver!--and I think they _ought_ to be 'Good-bye.' "Sir James Chide came after you left, and was most dear and kind. To-day I have my father's letter--and one from my mother--that she wrote for me--twenty years ago. I mustn't write any more. My eyes are so tired. "Your grateful DIANA." He laid down the blurred note, and turned to the enclosure. Then he read his mother's letter. And he had imagined, in his folly, that his mother's refinement would at least make use of some other weapon than the money! Why, it was _all_ money!--a blunderbuss of the crudest kind, held at Diana's head in the crudest way. This is how the saints behave--the people of delicacy--when it comes to a pinch! He saw his mother stripped of all her pretensions, her spiritual airs, and for the first time in his life--his life of unwilling subordination--he dared to despise her. But neither contempt nor indignation helped him much. How was he to answer Diana? He paced up and down for an hour considering it, then sat down and wrote. His letter ran as follows: