And then other events occurred to occupy her friends; the election for one thing began to grow a little exciting, and took away some of the superfluous energy of Grange Lane. Mr. Ashburton had carried all before him at first; but since the Rector had come into the field, the balance had changed a little. Mr. Bury was very Low-Church; and from the moment at which he was persuaded that Mr. Cavendish was a great penitent, the question as to which was the Man for Carlingford had been solved in his mind in the most satisfactory way. A man who intrenched himself in mere respectability, and trusted in his own good character, and considered himself to have a clear conscience, and to have done his duty, had no chance against a repentant sinner. Mr. Cavendish, perhaps, had not done his duty quite so well; but then he was penitent, and everything was expressed in that word. The Rector was by no means contemptible, either as an adversary or a supporter—and the worst of it was that, in embracing Mr. Cavendish’s claims, he could scarcely help speaking of Mr. Ashburton as if he was in a very bad way. And feeling began to rise rather high in Carlingford. If anything could have deepened the intensity of Miss Marjoribanks’s grief, it would have been to know that all this was going on, and that affairs might go badly with her candidate, while she was shut up, and could give no aid. It was hard upon her, and it was hard upon the candidates themselves—one of whom had thus become generally disapproved of, without, so far as he knew, doing anything to deserve it; while the other occupied the still more painful character of being on his promotion—a repentant man, with a character to keep up. It was no wonder that Mrs. Centum grew pale at the very idea of such a creature as Barbara Lake throwing herself in poor Mr. Cavendish’s way. A wrong step one way or other—a relapse into the ways of wickedness—might undo in a moment all that it had cost so much trouble to do. And the advantage of the Rector’s support was thus grievously counterbalanced by what might be called the uncertainty of it—especially as Mr. Cavendish was not, as his committee lamented secretly among themselves, a man of strong will or business habits, in whom implicit confidence could be placed. He might get restive, and throw the Rector over just at the critical moment; or he might relapse into his lazy Continental habits, and give up churchgoing and other good practices. But still, up to this moment, he had shown very tolerable perseverance; and Mr. Bury’s influence thrown into his scale had equalised matters very much, and made the contest very exciting. All this Lucilla heard, not from Mr. Cavendish, but from her own candidate, who had taken to calling in a steady sort of way. He never went into any effusions of sympathy, for he was not that kind of man; but he would shake hands with her, and say that people must submit to the decrees of Providence; and then he would speak of the election and of his chances. Sometimes Mr. Ashburton was despondent, and then Lucilla cheered him up; and sometimes he had very good hopes.
“I am very glad you are to be here,” he said on one of these occasions. “It would have been a great loss to me if you had gone away. I shall never forget our talk about it here that day, and how you were the first person that found me out.”
“It was not any cleverness of mine,” said Lucilla. “It came into my mind in a moment, like spirit-rapping, you know. It seems so strange to talk of that now; there have been such changes since then—it looks like years.”
“Yes,” said Mr. Ashburton, in his steady way. “There is nothing that really makes time look so long; but we must all bow to these dispensations, my dear Miss Marjoribanks. I would not speak of the election, but that I thought it might amuse you.
