“Would it be costly to keep the bonnet on your arm?”
“It is my pleasure to have it on my head, and my pleasure has some value to myself.”
“A moment ago,” he rejoined laughing, “it was your pleasure to have it on your arm.”
“Are all to be monotonous except Lord Eglington? Is he to have the only patent of change?”
“Do I change?” He smiled at her with a sense of inquisition, with an air that seemed to say, “I have lifted the veil of this woman’s heart; I am the master of the situation.”
She did not answer to the obvious meaning of his words, but said:
“Thee has done little else but change, so far as eye can see. Thee and thy family were once of Quaker faith, but thee is a High Churchman now. Yet they said a year ago thee was a sceptic or an infidel.”
“There is force in what you say,” he replied. “I have an inquiring mind; I am ever open to reason. Confucius said: ‘It is only the supremely wise or the deeply ignorant who never alter.’”
“Thee has changed politics. Thee made a ‘sensation, but that was not enough. Thee that was a rebel became a deserter.”
He laughed. “Ah, I was open to conviction! I took my life in my hands, defied consequences.” He laughed again.
“I am Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs,” he murmured complacently.
“Change is a policy with thee, I think. It has paid thee well, so it would seem.”
“Only a fair rate of interest for the capital invested and the risks I’ve taken,” he answered with an amused look.
“I do not think that interest will increase. Thee has climbed quickly, but fast climbing is not always safe climbing.”
His mood changed. His voice quickened, his face lowered. “You think I will fail? You wish me to fail?”
“In so far as thee acts uprightly, I wish thee well. But if, out of office, thee disregards justice and conscience and the rights of others, can thee be just and faithful in office? Subtlety will not always avail. The strong man takes the straight course. Subtlety is not intellect.”
He flushed. She had gone to the weakest point in his defences. His vanity was being hurt. She had an advantage now.
“You are wrong,” he protested. “You do not understand public life, here in a silly Quaker village.”
“Does thee think that all that happens in ‘public life’ is of consequence? That is not sensible. Thee is in the midst of a thousand immaterial things, though they have importance for the moment. But the chief things that matter to all, does thee not know that a ‘silly Quaker village’ may realise them to the full--more fully because we see them apart from the thousand little things that do not matter? I remember a thing in political life that mattered. It was at Heddington after the massacre at Damascus. Does thee think that we did not know thee spoke without principle then, and only to draw notice?”