hurrying and pressing
toward Richard Lincoln's house.

Mary Lincoln heard the growing tumult, and looked up at her father
alarmed. She had been playing softly on an organ in the dimly-lighted
room, while her father sat thinking and half listening to the low music,
as he gazed into the fire.

He had heard the crowd gathering in the square below, but he had not
heeded, till he started at last as a voice outside addressed the
multitude, calling for three cheers for the Member of Parliament for
Nottingham. The response, ringing from thousands of hearts, made Mary
Lincoln leap to her feet.

Her father sat still, looking toward the open window beneath which was
the tumult.

"Father," said Mary, calling him so for the first time in her life;
"they have nominated you. You will not refuse?"

"No," he said, almost mournfully. "I shall accept--and leave you again."

"Never again," she cried, "my own dear father. I shall go with you to
London. Oh, I am so proud of you!"

And Richard Lincoln accepted the nomination, and was elected. His name
rallied throughout the whole country the men who had its good at heart.

But the demagogue was raised to the highest place in the Republic, and
his party would have grown drunken with exultation had they not been
deterred by the solid front and the stern character of the opposition,
the leader of which from the first meeting of the new Parliament was
Richard Lincoln.

CHAPTER III.

MY LADY'S CHAMBER.

The seashore in late November is never cheerful. The gray, downcast
skies sadden the sympathetic ocean; the winds cut to the marrow, and the
yellow grass and bare trees make the land as sad-colored as the sea. But
even at this season a walk along the cliff upon which Ripon House stands
is invigorating, if the walker's blood is young. The outlook toward the
water is bluff and bold and the descent sheer.

A neat, gravelled path conforming to the line of the coast divides the
precipice from the smooth, closely-cropped lawn which sweeps down from
the terrace of the ancient mansion. Ripon House is an imposing, spacious
pile. It bears marks of the tampering of the last century when the
resuscitated architecture of Queen Anne threatened to become ubiquitous.

A vast plantation of stately trees originally shut out the buildings on
three sides from the common gaze, but the exigencies of the lawn-tennis
court and the subsequent destitution of the late earl, who renounced his
wood fi