because I was compelled to intimate to him that two Premiers in a Cabinet were one too many, and that, in my opinion, two Heads were not better than one." ("Hear, hear," and laughter.) But the noble lord has not confined his denunciations to me. Her Majesty's Government as a whole he has essayed to scarify. He has predicted that under that organised hypocrisy, as he has with such originality termed it (laughter), the country will go to the devil. Sir, the member for Wadding has long been the Old Moore of politics (loud laughter); but if he fancies that the country will follow him (immense laughter) in his distrust of Her Majesty's Government (more laughter) I shall not attempt to disturb his cheerful faith." (Laughter.) "The Laureate, in a celebrated passage of In Memoriam -and what more appropriate poem could be cited on the present occasion? (loud and prolonged laughter)-says:

'Leave thou thy sister where she prays,

Her early Heaven, her happy views.'

If we alter the sex throughout the couplet, and change prays to prophesies, and throw in the member for Wadding's devil in exchange for Tennyson's heaven, the verses will express my sentiments exactly." (Loud laughter.)

"6 'So, although I do not share the noble lord's belief that Government without the noble lord is only a roundabout method of going to the devil (laughter), I shall follow the spirit of the poet's advice by leaving the noble lord where he prophesies, and making no attempt to dispossess him of his devil (loud laughter) or of his happy views. I feel sure he will extend a similar tolerance to my own faith. Weakened as Her Majesty's Government undoubtedly is by the retirement of the noble lord. I believe it will still be able to totter on." (Laughter.) "While I sincerely deplore the loss of the coadjutorship of the noble lord, I console myself by the hope that in process of time, when the noble lord is cured of the excesses and impetuosities of youth; when the rigorous discipline of life shall have taught him the lesson that self-will pushed to the verge of egotism is not quite the same thing as resolution; when in the course of years he settles down into the sober and solid wisdom of a late maturity; and when study shall have given him a profounder mastery of Imperial and financial questions; his undeniable talents, his unquestionable ability in debate, will qualify him to again render valuable services to the State." (The right honourable gentleman resumed his seat amid cheers from all parts of the House, having spoken for ten minutes.)

While the grave senators were convulsed with merriment, Bardolph was convulsed with more malignant passions. The formidable indictment of dishonourable conduct which he had preferred against the Prime Minister, and which had at first made a weighty impression upon the House, had temporarily, at least, degenerated into a subject of inextinguishable laughter. Floppington delivered his speech in his newest manner, with his latest innovations in dramatic gesture and rhetorical pause. Despite the dignified tone

of the bulk of the speech, the timid hesitativeness of his application of the epithet "Nestorian," the half-frightened stopping short after "if the country will follow him," as though he had just perceived the implication, the mournful tone of his reference to In Memoriam, recalled the methods of American humorists on the lecture-platform, rather than of the great Christian orator of earlier debates, with his solemn invocations and his lambent flashes of melancholy humour. Poor Bardolph writhed under the excoriating lash of Floppington's contempt. He could have borne anything sooner than this frank avowal of the Premier's ability to dispense with the services of one who had hitherto been regarded as indispensable to a Tory Ministry. So lightly did his late chief appear to value him, that he would not even condescend to take him seriously, and, refusing to bandy arguments with him, had treated his pretensions with lofty arrogance, airy badinage, and unstatesmanlike sarcasm. The public humiliation was intolerable, and could not fail to damage powerfully his political status. The Ex-Secretary was an emotional creature at bottom. He could not imitate the external immobility of his adversary. He shifted about in fiery restlessness and twisted his moustache furiously. The Radicals, who had appeared sympathetic at first, had ended by joining in the hearty laughter at his expense. He had not bargained for the simple outspokenness of the Premier, whose statement was tantamount to the assertion that the Foreign Secretary had been virtually deposed from his lofty position. He darted fierce glances at the Treasury Bench, and vowed vengeance on his unprincipled colleagues, especially on those who were his friends. None of the latter had, as yet, sent in their resignations. The fact was that they admitted the justness of their chief's standpoint. The older members who had served in the last Conservative Government, had all along been wondering at the dominating tone assumed by the pert youngster, the new man, ignorant or disdainful of the traditions of the Cabinet, and at the patience with which the Premier had tolerated the insubordination of his inferior. It was now plain to his fellow Ministers that the attitude assumed by Lord Mountchapel on the Women's Suffrage question had been the last straw that broke the back of even so long-suffering a camel as the Right Honourable Arnold Floppington.

The views of these gentlemen found expression in a peculiarly bitter article in the next day's Standard, which obviously took its cue from the speech of the Prime Minister. After commenting severely upon the indiscretions of the youthful Ex-Minister, whom it characterised as an "overgrown schoolboy," it proceeded to treat the whole affair as burlesque, and as necessitating a like levity in the handling of it. "MR. FLOPPINGTON was well advised," it said, "in refusing to continue the critical discussion of the actions of an imaginary being. If the House were in the habit of sitting for the purpose of analysing the creations of fiction, no doubt MR. FLOPPINGTON could add a valuable quota to the discussion of the noble lord's conception of MR. FLOPPINGTON, since his total absence

of relation to the character under analysis would be a guarantee of impartiality. The utterances of the Member for WADDING have long revealed an embryonic talent for origination, but never before —we speak under correction-had his genius flashed forth so decisively as last night, and it ought not to be long before his speeches appear in the appropriate three volumes of the moral Mudie.* Only an Italian improvisatore of the highest order could rival him in his rapid invention of character, dialogue, and incident, and all the while his eye rolled in the fine frenzy which we have been taught to associate with the process of giving to airy nothings a local habitation and a name. It was well that the unsullied reputation of the great statesman who directs the destinies of the nation reassured his supporters, or they would have passed several bad quarters of an hour while the late Foreign Secretary was making his clumsy but forcible onslaught. And their faith was fully justified in the sequel. LORD BARDOLPH MOUNTCHAPEL, like all ambitious poets, attempted the historical drama, but the demands of art caused him to overdraw his villains and throw too spiritual a halo over his martyrs. After the literary historiographer usually comes the prosaic investigator; after the sprightly man of romance the dull man of facts; and it frequently turns out that the villains are no worse than the martyrs, and the martyrs no better than they should be. But rarely does the man of facts tread so fast on the heels of the artist as he did last night. How the noble lord could have ventured upon misrepresentation so gross in the face of the knowledge that immediate contradiction and exposure was inevitable, it is difficult to understand; but his conduct is of a piece with his wonted policy of living from hand to mouth. Nothing is so favourable to discontent as resignation, and the Ex-Minister evidently sacrificed everything to the promptings of spleen and dissatisfaction."

Even the Daily News, which took the passage of arms far more seriously, and spoke of it in language far more cautious, accepted in the main the undisguised avowal of the Premier that he and Mountchapel could not (as the pressmen put it) run in a team, and that they were forced to separate by incompatibility of temperament; while the Pall Mall Gazette crystallised much fluid thought by pithily suggesting that in the Premier's opinion the machine of Government was not a Sociable, and that Floppington preferred to skelter down-hill alone.

By the Opposition, indeed, the fall of Mountchapel was hailed with more or less open delight. Not only must it weaken the Government, but also it held out some prospect of the desertion of a formidable adversary to their own ranks. The audacity and independence of the Premier impressed as much as they astonished the

The allusion is to Mudie's Library, a philanthropic institution founded for the purpose of compelling authors to expand a word into a sentence, a sentence into a page, and a page into a volume (to reverse the saying of Joubert), in order that the supply of reading-matter might not run short; and also serving as a succedaneum for the absent censorship of the Press.

House; and even the mental sluggards whom the announcement of the ministerial intentions had failed to arouse began to recognise that their conceptions of " Floppy" must be overhauled.

Following hard upon the unpleasant incident in the House there came to Bardolph the unpleasant rumour that a marriage had been arranged between the Premier and Lady Harley. The rumour was to some extent confirmed by some remarks in the number of Truth which appeared after the Cabinet Council. This smart Society journal, in some respects the prototype of the "Causerie " leaflets that played such an important part in the social life of the reign of Albert I., asserted, " on good authority," that now that woman was to have a vote, the Premier was to have a wife; and inquired satirically whether he had vowed to remain a bachelor so long as every possible partner, whatever her beauty or talents, must be devoid of the crowning grace of suffrage. The next paragraph congratulated Lady Harley on the prospective victory of her

cause.

This blow was not calculated to lessen the rancorous activity of his opposition to the Reform Bill. As Tremaine had shrewdly divined, he was leading a sort of patchwork coalition, the components of which were only united by a common desire to throw out the measure. It was not till the night preceding that on which it was almost certain that the division would be taken that contradictory reports reached his ears concerning the Premier's marriage. For gibing the heel of Truth came the World with a playful rebuke of its rival, and stating, " on higher authority," that far from there being any truth in the malicious insinuations that the Minister's head had been unduly influenced by his heart, there was even a coolness between him and the lady in question.

Bardolph determined to pay Gwendolen a visit the very next day, in order to ascertain, if possible, how the ground lay; and for other reasons. It was perhaps prudent, in view of future contingencies, to make clear to her the grounds of his opposition. Moreover, he had not met her since the Duchess's reception, and he hungered for a sight of her face and a quiet talk to soothe his troubled spirit. Despair had, indeed, almost stung him to the proposing point.

CHAPTER IV.

BARDOLPH GOES A-WOOING.

IT is well that so few people are able to read their own biographies, for, though less false than their autobiographies, the errors generally lean to the wrong side. And although the writer has been able to find no contemporary volume devoted to the life of Lady Harley, the remark will still apply to the ana concerning her which appeared from time to time in the contemporary press. It was well, then, that she was not in the habit of looking at herself in the distorting

mirror of ephemeral literature, for at one period she would have found her lineaments invested with an expression of appealing piteousness which she was utterly incapable of assuming. Lady Gwendolen was not one of those social nobodies who resemble amateur authors in their eagerness to see their names in print, and whose selfishness leads them to such extremes of altruism that they are anxious to be a bonne bouche "in everybody's mouth," rather than that the supply of scandal should run short. So when, as happened in the course of time, a certain amount of commiseration began to be felt for her, her ignorance of its existence prevented her from enjoying this sympathy of the public. But she did not suffer the less because this compassion was wanting. She bled in silence, like the wounded fawn, whose cries would only bring the hunters on its track. For some days after her miserable discovery she remained in a state of utter prostration. Floppington had been to her the embodiment of her ideals of honour, delicacy, chivalry; and with the fall of the concrete man, it seemed at first as if these ideals, too, had been shattered. The thought that her life would not be an utter failure, since she was soon to see the emancipation of her sex, afforded her but little comfort in those dark days. She realised now how much selfish joy had entered into that sacred rapture which had been hers when the Premier announced to her the change in his views. How childish seemed now that first moment of delicious two-fold anticipation! The cool, fragrant conservatory, with its waxen exotics, often rose dimly before her through a mist of tears, but darkness reigned therein, save where a ray of moonlight fell upon the mocking, stony countenance of Bacchus.

Life without love seemed a poor thing to one whose intellect, keen as it was, always worked on the lines laid down by emotion. It was true that she had let the Premier understand that she could never be his so long as he was of his old mind on the Woman Question, but the voluntary breach was very different from the present. That had all the exquisite pleasure of renunciation combined with the soothing hope that it would sooner or later be unnecessary. Bitterly disappointed in her first marriage, she cherished unconfessed visions of future happiness. No sooner was the first shock of marital bereavement over, than there sprang up in her soul an aftermath of the earnest aspirations and high ideals of her girlhood. And now once again the fatal sickle of conventional immorality had remorselessly cut down the golden harvest.

A week passed before Gwendolen could settle down to her old life. Making a resolute effort to shake off the past, she sat down one afternoon to answer her neglected correspondents. As she opened her desk, she perceived her unrevised eulogy on the Premier. She took it up with a sigh, and read it through with half-humorous scepticism. It seemed to belong to a world of dream in which she had dwelt ages ago, and to which she could no more return than to the innocent days of childish happiness. But its perusal wrought a good effect. It appealed to her sense of fun.