
up the strange name than Beauchamp had been.
    »I understand that. But you understand, there 's never been a word against
the morals of Mr. Cougham. Here 's the point: Do we mean to be a moral country?
Very well, then so let our representatives be, I say. And if I hear nothing
against your morals, Mr. Commander, I don't say you shan't have my vote. I mean
to deliberate. You young nobs capering over our heads - I nail you down to
morals. Politics secondary. Adew, as the dying spirit remarked to weeping
friends.«
    »Au revoir - would have been kinder,« said Palmet.
    Mr. Tripehallow smiled roguishly, to betoken comprehension.
    Beauchamp asked Mr. Oggler whether that fellow was to be taken for a
humourist or a five-pound-note man.
    »It may be both, sir. I know he 's called Morality Joseph.«
    An all but acknowledged five-pound-note man was the last they visited. He
cut short the preliminaries of the interview by saying that he was a
four-o'clock man; i.e. the man who waited for the final bids to him upon the
closing hour of the election day.
    »Not one farthing!« said Beauchamp, having been warned beforehand of the
signification of the phrase by his canvassing lieutenant.
    »Then you 're nowhere,« the honest fellow replied in the mystic tongue of
prophecy.
    Palmet and Beauchamp went to their fish and meat; smoked a cigarette or two
afterward, conjured away the smell of tobacco from their persons as well as they
could, and betook themselves to the assembly-room of the Liberal party, where
the young lord had an opportunity of beholding Mr. Cougham, and of listening to
him for an hour and forty minutes. He heard Mr. Timothy Turbot likewise. And
Miss Denham was present. Lord Palmet applauded when she smiled. When she looked
attentive he was deeply studious. Her expression of fatigue under the sonorous
ring of statistics poured out from Cougham was translated by Palmet into yawns
and sighs of a profoundly fraternal sympathy. Her face quickened on the rising
of Beauchamp to speak. She kept eye on him all the while, as Palmet, with the
skill of an adept in disguising his petty larceny of the optics, did on her.
Twice or thrice she looked pained: Beauchamp was hesitating for the word. Once
she looked startled and shut her eyes: a hiss had sounded; Beauchamp sprang on
it as if enlivened by hostility, and dominated
