The orange-coloured
wrappers she tore off, one by one. As she read, her face softened and
her eyes grew very bright. The first cutting was a report of Tallente's
last speech in the House, a clever and forceful attack upon the
Government's policy of compromise in the matter of recent strikes. The
next was a speech at the Holborn Town Hall, on workmen's dwellings,
another a thoughtful appreciation of him from the pages of a great
review. There was also a eulogy from an American journal and a gloomy
attack upon him in the chief Whig organ. When she had finished the
pile, she sat for some time gazing at the burning logs. The little
epitome of his daily life--there were records there even of many of his
social engagements-seemed to carry her into another atmosphere, an
atmosphere far removed from this lonely spot upon the moors. She seemed
to catch from those printed lines some faint, reflective thrill of the
more vital world of strife in which he was living. For a moment the
roar of London was in her ears. She saw the lighted thoroughfares, the
crowded pavements, the faces of the men and women, all a little strained
and eager, so different from the placid immobility of the world in which
she lived.
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