His brow cleared. He considered the matter.

"I think you may expect some of the newspapers to make a good deal of
it," he said, smiling.

And, in fact, his own inherited tastes and instincts were all chafed by
her story. His wife--the wife of a Cabinet Minister--pleading for her
husband's Bill, or, as the enemy might say, for his political existence,
with an East End meeting, and incidentally with the whole
public--exposing herself, in a time of agitation, to the rowdyism and
the stone-throwing that wait on such things! The notion set the
fastidious old-world temper of the man all on edge. But he would never
have dreamed of arguing the matter so with her. A sort of high chivalry
forbade it. In marrying her he had not made a single condition--would
have suffered tortures rather than lay the smallest fetter upon her. In
consequence, he had been often thought a weak, uxorious person. Maxwell
knew that he was merely consistent. No sane man lays his heart at the
feet of a Marcella without counting the cost.

She did not answer his last remark. But he saw that she was wistful and
uneasy, and presently she laid her fingers lightly on his.

"Tell me if I am too much away from you--too much occupied with
other people."

He sighed,--the slightest sigh,--but she winced. "I had just an hour
before dinner," he said; "you were not here, and the house seemed very
empty. I would have come down to fetch you, but there were some important
papers to read before to-morrow." A Cabinet meeting was fixed, as she
knew, for the following day. "Then, I have been making Saunders draw up a