Page:Eliot - Felix Holt, the Radical, vol. I, 1866.djvu/226

216 you are apt to think. You must persuade yourself," he added, smiling at her, "that it is better for a man of his position to be in Parliament on the wrong side than not be in at all."

"Never," said Mrs Transome. "I am too old to learn to call bitter sweet and sweet bitter. But what I may think or feel is of no consequence now. I am as unnecessary as a chimney ornament."

And in this way they parted on the gravel, in that pretty scene where they had met. Mrs Transome shivered as she stood alone: all around her, where there had once been brightness and warmth, there were white ashes, and the sunshine looked dreary as it fell on them.

Mr Jermyn's heaviest reflections in riding homeward turned on the possibility of incidents between himself and Harold Transome which would have disagreeable results, requiring him to raise money, and perhaps causing scandal, which in its way might also help to create a monetary deficit. A man of sixty, with a wife whose Duffield connections were of the highest respectability, with a family of tall daughters, an expensive establishment, and a large professional business, owed a great deal more to himself as the mainstay of all those solidities, than to feelings and ideas which were quite unsubstan-