Page:Eliot - Felix Holt, the Radical, vol. I, 1866.djvu/80

70 making herself disagreeable to Harold to no purpose. But half the sorrows of women would be averted if they could repress the speech they know to be useless; nay, the speech they have resolved not to utter. Harold continued his walking a moment longer, and then said to Jermyn,

"You smoke?"

"No, I always defer to the ladies. Mrs Jermyn is peculiarly sensitive in such matters, and doesn't like tobacco."

Harold, who, underneath all the tendencies which had made him a Liberal, had intense personal pride, thought, "Confound the fellow—with his Mrs Jermyn! Does he think we are on a footing for me to know anything about his wife?"

"Well, I took my hookah before breakfast," he said aloud; "so, if you like, well go into the library. My father never gets up till mid-day, I find."

"Sit down, sit down," said Harold, as they entered the handsome, spacious library. But he himself continued to stand before a map of the county which he had opened from a series of rollers occupying a compartment among the book-shelves. "The first question, Mr Jermyn, now you know my intentions, is, whether you will undertake to be my agent in this election, and help me through? There's no