It meant that the Glenavelin household, including herself, would be in a different camp for three dreary weeks, and that Mr.Stocks would claim more of her society than ever.

With feminine inconsistency she visited her repugnance towards that gentleman on his innocent rival.
But Mr.Lewis Haystoun's light-hearted manner of regarding the business struck the little Puritan deeper.

Politics had always been a thing of the gravest import in her eyes, bound up with a man's duty and honour and religion, and lo! here was this Gallio who not only adorned a party she had been led to regard as reprobate, but treated the whole affair as a half-jocular business, on which one should not be serious.

It was sheer weakness, her heart cried out, the weakness of the philanderer, the half-hearted.

In her vexation her interest flew in sympathy to Mr.
Stocks, and she viewed him for the occasion with favour.
"You are far too frivolous about it," she cried.