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 two years." She felt, in fact, that she had every right to insist upon it. Still the old Die-hard supposed she must look at the bright side of the picture: this Miss Sholto, although an American, was not a person of color. She had no money, therefore John's infatuation for her was extremely reprehensible; at the same time, she seemed a shrewd, sensible, practical girl, and had the makings no doubt of an excellent wife. But if she was only a quarter as extravagant as the other American wives Lady Elizabeth had heard of, it would be quite impossible for them to keep up Wyndham. In the meantime, the old lady was a little appeased by John's announcement that they proposed to live in London in a very modest fashion, strictly in accordance with their own present income, and she would be left to carry on at Wyndham in the way she had always done.

The Blackhampton by-election might be an odd kind of honeymoon, yet John and Helen considered it to be an affair vastly more exhilarating than the regulation visit to an empty country house which ended invariably in boredom. At any rate, to John and Helen, there was nothing in the least boring about the Blackhampton election.

To begin with, they recognized from the outset how much was at stake. Then, too, Blackhampton itself, a live place, with three hundred thousand particularly live people in it, was by no means addicted to boredom. For these the world was far too full of a number of