Chippinge Borough by Stanley J. Weyman — Read

Vaughan had been sore at heart before the meeting in Parliament Street. After that meeting he was in a mood to take any step which promised to salve his self-esteem. The Chancellor, Lord Lansdowne, Sir Robert, and-and Mary, all, he told himself, were against him. But they should not crush him. He would prove to them that he was no negligible quantity. Parliament was prorogued; the Long Vacation was far advanced; the world, detained beyond its time, was hurrying out of town. He, too, would go out of town; and he would go to Chippinge. There, in defiance alike of his cousin and the Bowood interest, he would throw himself upon the people. He would address himself to those whom the Bill enfranchised, he would appeal to the future electors of Chippinge, he would ask them whether the will of their great neighbours was to prevail, and the claims of service and of gratitude were to go for nothing. Surely at this time of day the answer could not be adverse!

True, the course he proposed matched ill with the party notions which still prevailed. It was a complete breach with the family traditions in which he had been reared. But in his present mood Vaughan liked his plan the better for this. Henceforth he would be iron, he would be adamant! And only by a little thing did he betray that under the iron and under the adamant he carried an aching heart. When he came to book his place, deliberately, wilfully, he chose to travel by the Bath road and the White Lion coach, though he could have gone at least as conveniently by another coach and another route. Thus have men ever, since they first felt the pangs of love, rejoiced to press the dart more deeply in the wound.