 sleep on Parliamentary benches.
His ignorance of the machinery of government was profound; though he spoke
scornfully of Parliament and its members, he had no conception of those powers
of dulness and respectability which seize upon the best men if folly lures them
within the precincts of St. Stephen's. He thought, poor fellow! that he could
rise in his place and thunder forth his indignant eloquence as he did in
Commonwealth Hall and elsewhere; he imagined a conscience-stricken House, he
dreamed of passionate debates on a Bill which really had the good of the people
for its sole object. Such Bill would of course bear his name; shall we condemn
him for that?
    Adela was at Exmouth, drinking the mild air, wondering whether there was in
truth a life to come, and, if so, whether it was a life wherein Love and Duty
were at one. A year ago such thoughts could not have entered her mind. But she
had spent several weeks in close companionship with Stella Westlake, and
Stella's influence was subtle. Mrs. Westlake had come here to regain strength
after a confinement; the fact drew her near to Adela, whose time for giving
birth to a child was not far off.
    Adela at first regarded this friend with much the same feeling of awe as
mingled with Letty's affection for Adela herself. Stella Westlake was not only
possessed of intellectual riches which Adela had had no opportunity of gaining;
her character was so full of imaginative force, of dreamy splendours, that it
addressed itself to a mind like Adela's with magic irresistible and permanent.
No rules of the polite world applied to Stella; she spoke and acted with an
independence so spontaneous that it did not suggest conscious opposition to the
received ways of thought to which ordinary women are confined, but rather a
complete ignorance of them. Adela felt herself startled, but never shocked, even
when the originality went most counter to her own prejudices; it was as though
she had drunk a draught of most unexpected flavour, the effect of which was to
set her nerves delightfully trembling, and make her long to taste it again. It
was not an occasional effect, the result of an effort on Stella's part to
surprise or charm; the commonest words had novel meanings when uttered in her
voice; a profound sincerity seemed to inspire every lightest question or remark.
Her presence was agitating; she had but to enter the room and sit in silence,
and Adela forthwith was raised from the depression of her broodings to a
vividness of being, an imaginative energy, such as she had never known
