And his mind
flew for a moment to his promising two-year-old Casetta; then dashed
almost violently, as though in shame, to the Admiralty and the doubt
whether they were fully alive to possibilities. He himself occupied a
softer spot of Government, one of those almost nominal offices necessary
to qualify into the Cabinet certain tried minds, for whom no more
strenuous post can for the moment be found. From the Admiralty again
his thoughts leaped to his mother-in-law. Wonderful old woman! What a
statesman she would have made! Too reactionary! Deuce of a straight line
she had taken about Mrs. Lees Noel! And with a connoisseur's twinge of
pleasure he recollected that lady's face and figure seen that morning
as he passed her cottage. Mysterious or not, the woman was certainly
attractive! Very graceful head with its dark hair waved back from the
middle over either temple--very charming figure, no lumber of any sort!
Bouquet about her! Some story or other, no doubt--no affair of his!
Always sorry for that sort of woman!
A regiment of Territorials returning from a march stayed the progress of
his car. He leaned forward watching them with much the same contained,
shrewd, critical look he would have bent on a pack of hounds. All the
mistiness and speculation in his mind was gone now. Good stamp of man,
would give a capital account of themselves! Their faces, flushed by a
day in the open, were masked with passivity, or, with a half-aggressive,
half-jocular self-consciousness; they were clearly not troubled by
abstract doubts, or any visions of the horrors of war.
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