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This, gentlemen, concludes our business for to-day. At our next meeting I shall lay before you the text of the clause I propose the Government shall agree to support. I presume it will be the work of a united Cabinet."

CHAPTER III.

LOVE AND SUFFRAGE.

WHEN the relative positions of the man and the woman come to be reversed, the latter becoming the "superior sex," and the former, presumably, the "better half" of the connubial unity, the amorous fair one" (if indeed the title be not inherited by the male) may indite sonnets to her beloved's eyebrow, and the masculine charms may at length meet with poetic appreciation. The feminine eye has too long had the vested right of misleading the morn, or of abashing the constellations; the feminine face has too long possessed the monopoly of floriculture: these women's rights are men's wrongs. Still it must be admitted that the ladies, when justifying their choice, make up for their reticence as to our physical traits by flattering our moral features, which, as they are less apparent, are less able to contradict the ideal portrait.

Seldom has a finer opportunity of glorifying her lover, salva conscientia, fallen to the lot of a woman than that which Lady Harley was now taking by the forelock. Since the réunion in the Duchess's salon, she had neither seen the Premier nor heard from him. She had passed most of the time in a state of girlish lightheartedness and vivacity. Full of her two-fold secret, she seemed to herself (for science was among her accomplishments) to breathe a non-nitrogenous atmosphere. It was a delightful experience, too, though curiously verging on the pathetic, to attend a meeting of the National Society for Women's Suffrage and to listen to halfenthusiastic, half-despairing reports and discussions. The goal seemed still far off to these earnest workers, the recently manifested strength of antagonism to the enfranchisement of women had saddened them, and some of them were reconciled to the belief that the rumour of success would never penetrate the silence of their graves. There was one sickly, elderly lady whose noble selfsacrifice for the cause (the circumstances were known to Lady Harley, but not to the world, which ridiculed her) had greatly stimulated her to her own humble efforts. But hope had fled with health, and her work was now limited to electrifying her friends by the lightnings of her bitter indignation. How Lady Harley would have liked to tell the poor creature that the day had come ! But she restrained herself. In a few days they would know all. Tears started to her eyes, and she was thrilled by the pathos of long-deferred success. She said a few hopeful words, reminding them of the reports that were in the air. More she dared not say, and even while speaking, a dreadful chilling doubt invaded her soul.

What if, after all, the Premier underwent another phase? Was it not incredible that at one stroke Fate would ensure her own happiness and, in some measure, that of all other women? And if he did undergo another phase, the ultimate success of their movement would be as distant as the most pessimistic Member imagined. For, while Floppington retained his supremacy over the House (and his influence, being due to the magic of his oratory, was independent of his possession of office), she knew that it would be wellnigh impossible to obtain the coveted measure if he should put himself at the head of the Opposition. A charm so potent that it had temporarily withdrawn not a few of the Liberals from their allegiance was not to be counteracted without "backward mutterings of dissevering power" from the enchanter himself. With his advocacy, however, with the aid of his eloquence, which could not fail to convince the members of his own party and add them to the already convinced Liberals, it would be easy to free the ladies, at present, so to speak,

"In stony fetters fixed and motionless."

Her conscience sometimes plied her with uneasy queries as to whether she had sold herself for the benefit of her sex. After impartial examination, however, she acquitted herself of the charge on the plea that she had loved him in his character of man, irrespective of his character of political animal, and had only refused to unite her life with his because she felt that it would be a sort of desertion of her colours to merge her political personality in one so diverse. And she might feel not the less of honest pride in this heroic self-sacrifice on the altar of principle, because it had ceased to be necessary. It thus appeared that her conscience had been over-busy, and it now received an effectual snub which somewhat diminished its officious zeal.

But on the morning wherewith this chapter deals, all doubts were set at rest by a glorious announcement in the Standard which almost compensated for her slight disappointment at not having received during the week some hastily scrawled note addressed from the House, such as she thought she had a right to expect.

"We understand," ran the obviously official paragraph, “ that at the Cabinet Council held yesterday, it was unanimously resolved not to resist the introduction into the Franchise Bill of a clause extending the franchise to women, should such an amendment be proposed in Committee. It is expected that the Opposition will be conciliated by this deference to their views, and the second reading of this long-debated Bill may now, therefore, be regarded as a certainty. It is supposed that the first part of the sitting was taken up with Lord Bardolph Mountchapel's explanation of the motives of his resignation. His lordship left at half-past two, probably immediately after his explanation, and was received with cheers by a crowd which had assembled to watch the arrival and departure of the Ministers. The sitting terminated at a few minutes before three."

So it

The other dailies were all at sea, and destitute of this compass, they floundered about wildly. It had long been suspected that the Foreign Secretary and his chief were at loggerheads, but it was thought that the unsuccessful career with the small chances of life of the Reform Bill was at the bottom of their differences. was a huge joke to the world at large, which had read the Standard, and which saw that Mountchapel was the only honest man in the Cabinet, to peruse the dogmatic leaders of the other journals, which gravely laid it down that Floppington's reluctance to follow him in his inconsistent willingness to enfranchise the female sex had forced him to resign his portfolio. One could hardly imagine a more delicious commentary on these dogmatic utterances than the glaring evidence of their incorrectness supplied by the paragraph in the ministerial organ. Nevertheless, the next day they were as omniscient as ever.

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As for the astounding alteration in the ministerial programme, and consequently in the ministerial fortunes, it would require a volume to reproduce the hundreds of columns of praise, or of blame, or of both in varying proportions. An eloquent denunciation of the Premier's tergiversation will be found in Dullman's "Memoirs of Mountchapel," and an eloquent defence in Prosie's Short Sketch of the Ministry of the Elder Floppington." Floppington himself went on his impassive way, displaying the iron will of a Bismarck, and indifferent alike to invective or laudation. Had it not been for an accidental opportunity outside the House, he would probably never have broken his austere and stoical silence.

From the Standard Gwendolen turned to the other journals, to find them one and all weltering in that slough of ignorance which has been described, and without a suspicion of the intentions of the Government whose speedy disintegration--now that it had lost its tower of strength-they prophesied with no uncertain tone. The Franchise Bill would be rejected by a majority of at least one hundred, made up of Liberals and Parnellites; Parliament would dissolve, and the brief period of Tory ascendency would be at an end. They had evidently received no inkling of the "wise concession " dexterously eulogised by their Conservative contemporary. The exhaustive ignorance of the rest of the press gave Gwendolen a curious feeling of illusion. She almost felt that she was dreaming the good news. But no, that was impossible. As she glanced casually over the papers she felt that she was incapable of inventing, even in sleep, the ancient history which, alive with capitals, glared at her from the serried lines of the Daily Telegraph. Besides, she remarked a few errors in one of the leaders of another journal— though not enough to allow it to be mistaken for an ordinary article --and she knew that in dreamland such self-criticism is rare. But though she soon began to laugh softly and joyously to herself at her absurd doubts, everything did not yet wear the clarity of morning. There was a mysterious unreality about Lord Bardolph's resignation which still puzzled her. The conclusion, natural to every one else, that his retirement the day after a mo

mentous Cabinet Council could be no mere coincidence, but the result of antagonism to the determinations of that assembly, was not natural to one to whom he had, weeks ago, confided the secret of his conversion. She could not entertain such a supposition for an instant. The Standard, which alone might have supplied the solution, was evidently as ignorant as the rest of the press was confident, hinting vaguely at a difference between the Premier and the Foreign Secretary as to the method of dealing with the Bobo difficulty; and she was too full of pleasurable excitement to rack her brain for other hypotheses. No sooner had she finished her perusal of the morning papers than, afire with love and gratitude, she betook herself to her desk to write, in the first flush of enthusiasm, the leading article for the next issue of the monthly magazine devoted to the enfranchisement of women, and it was then that she enjoyed the exquisite pleasure of writing prose dithyrambs on her lover.

As if in revenge for previous criticism, this asserted that he had never done anything wrong, that in all his aberrations he had followed the Jack o' Lantern of conscience; that Humanity-and especially the long-oppressed half of it-owed him an eternal debt; that no nobler spirit had ever swayed the destinies of the nation; in short, to read it you would have thought that the man was just dead.

This rhapsody was foamed out at the point of a spluttering quill by her ladyship while seated in her study-for she had early appropriated to herself a chamber for this masculine purpose, nor could it be distinguished from the den of the ordinary male, save by the absence of pipes and litter.

Her morning dress was very plain, but then as she was not, the absence of ornament served only to set off her charms, which were such as perhaps an exceptional woman here and there might have preferred to a vote. Excitement and happiness had lent a lovely, delicate flush to her usually pale cheeks, and a bewitching sparkle to her usually dreamy eyes.

The leader finished, the fair writer laid down her pen, and contemplated the MS. It was written in as well as by a beautiful hand, and each letter was unmistakably itself, and quite unindebted to its neighbours for its legibility. There were no erasures, because there was no laboured composition; there was a direct route between her heart and the point of her pen, and her thoughts travelled express along it. Yet on re-reading her work, she found that the execution fell far short of the conception. But she must defer touching it up, for many daily duties claimed her attention. She returned to the charge on the first opportunity, which did not present itself till nearly four p.in.-by which early hour, by a happy accident, all her usual visitors had come and gone-full of new enthusiasm ready to vent itself in words. She settled to her desk once more, and began "toning up" her fervent sentences. Immersed in this agreeable occupation, with the image of the Premier ever before her, she suddenly woke to find that the bodily man himself had called and was waiting to see her. Her heart gave a great leap of

joy; he had kept his word, he had taken up the cause of her sisters, and now he was come to claim her gratitude, her collaboration, her sympathy, her love. Determining to receive him where she was, in the study where the happiest hours of her life had been passed, she put his praises into her desk, and her pen into its receptacle on the richly chased silver inkstand which her grandfather had bought in Venice to serve as an ancient heirloom-the family, though rich in genuine ancestors, being rather out of other antiquities-and replaced the books she had been referring to in their exact homes on the shelves. Even at this supreme moment she had that soul for detail which marks great genius or great mediocrity; but she had the soul of the artist, for she felt that her rhapsodical abilities would be raised to a much higher power by the coming interview, and also the soul of a woman in so far as that expresses itself by a heightened colour, a quickened pulse, a pleasing fear, and a great rush of tender thoughts and recollections. The pale, wistful face of the Premier, the premature furrows on his brow, the slightly stooping figure, as they now rose before her nearly with the vividness of reality, roused that almost maternal feeling of pity, which in a woman is akin to love. Hers should be the envied task of smoothing those lines of care, of invigorating and encouraging that jaded spirit; a fair vista of happiness stretched down the years that were to be fruitful in noble work and lofty thought. His soul, weary of the pursuit of Truth under difficulties in the clamour of the forum, would, haply, receive new light from the glimmer of the fire on the shrine of Vesta.

The clock began to strike four; the Premier's footsteps, falling with slow and grave precision, were heard outside, and her ladyship, at the last instant, turned involuntarily to the mirror, forgetting she was not in her boudoir. She had an inaccurate feeling that her hair must be rumpled, but there was no looking-glass to which to turn for help. Such an article had been strictly banished from it, probably as likely to cause reflections antagonistic to the genius loci. One touch of nature makes the whole world kin." Under a similar lack of this necessary of life, mistress and maid displayed equal ingenuity.

Eliza Bathbrill, on the eve of a love-meeting with Jack Dawe, consulted a tin pan.

Lady Harley, on the eve of a love-meeting with the Honourable Arnold Floppington, consulted a silver inkstand.

CHAPTER IV.

HISTORY IN BLACK AND WHITE.

It

A man who

AT the last stroke of four the Premier entered the study. was as if he had timed himself to arrive at that hour. shared the love of Lucretius for getting at the causas rerum might