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EBLE had received a petition signed by Conservatives throughout the county inviting him to present himself as candidate for the provincial elections. He had foreseen this, but hesitated to accept the nomination. In the first place he was barely thirty; in the second place success at the polls would mean protracted absences from the ranch; in the third place he was not sure that Louise would approve. He remembered her saying, apropos of her Uncle Alfred Mornay-Mareuil, "If he had only been able to control his ambition! Politics is as demoralizing as gambling." And Keble quite often took Louise's remarks at their literal value.

When it came time to select a candidate for the elections, the scattered Conservatives of the district, knowing that the only hope of making a showing against their entrenched opponents was to induce Keble Eveley, with his important holdings and the prestige of his name, to stand for them, had encountered opposition from the supporters of the mayor of Witney, who in several consecutive elections had suffered defeat at the hands of the Liberal candidate, but who had learned to look forward to his periodical worsting as an agreeable break in the monotony