'Well, I'm thinking too, and I find it quite possible to be vexed at the same time. I assure you, Dorcas, I really am busy; and it is too bad to have one's time wasted in solemn lectures about stuff and nonsense. Do make Rachel explain herself, if she can--_I_ have no objection, I assure you; but I must be permitted to decline undertaking to interpret that oracle.' And so saying, Stanley Lake glided into the library and shut the door with an angry clap. Dorcas did not deign to look after him. She had heard his farewell address, looking from the window at the towering and sombre clumps of her ancestral trees--pale, proud, with perhaps a peculiar gleam of resentment--or malignity--in her exquisite features. So she stood, looking forth on her noble possessions--on terraces--'long rows of urns'--noble timber--all seen in slanting sunlight and long shadows--and seeing nothing but the great word FOOL! in letters of flame in the air before her. CHAPTER XLVII. A THREATENING NOTICE. Stanley Lake was not a man to let the grass grow under his feet when an object was to be gained. It was with a sure prescience that Mark Wylder's letter had inferred that Stanley Lake would aspire to the representation either of the county or of the borough of Dollington. His mind was already full of these projects. Electioneering schemes are conducted, particularly at their initiation, like conspiracies--in fact, they _are_ conspiracies, and therefore there was nothing remarkable in the intense caution with which Stanley Lake set about his. He was not yet 'feeling his way.' He was only preparing to feel his way. All the data, except the muster-roll of electors, were _in nubibus_--who would retire--who would step forward, as yet altogether in the region of conjecture. There are men to whom the business of elections--a life of secrecy, excitement, speculation, and combat--has all but irresistible charms; and Tom Wealdon, the Town Clerk, was such a spirit.