ions with the new Minister; perhaps even sounded the Court. At
the same time that in this agitating vision the great offices of the
palace which she had apportioned to herself and her husband seemed
to elude her grasp; the claims and hopes and interests of her various
children haunted her perplexed consciousness. What if Charles Egremont
were to get the place which she had projected for Frederick or Augustus?
What if Lord Marney became master of the horse? Or Lord Deloraine went
again to Ireland? In her nervous excitement she credited all these
catastrophes; seized upon "the Duke" in order that Lady Deloraine might
not gain his ear, and resolved to get home as soon as possible, in order
that she might write without a moment's loss of time to Sir Robert.

"They will hardly go out without making some peers," said Sir Vavasour
Firebrace to Mr Jermyn.

"Why they have made enough."

"Hem! I know Tubbe Swete has a promise, and so has Cockawhoop. I don't
think Cockawhoop could show again at Boodle's without a coronet."

"I don't see why these fellows should go out," said Mr Ormsby. "What
does it signify whether ministers have a majority of five, or ten or
twenty? In my time, a proper majority was a third of the House. That was
Lord Liverpool's majority. Lord Monmouth used to say that there were
ten families in this country who, if they could only agree, could always
share the government. Ah! those were the good old times! We never had
adjourned debates then; but sate it out like gentlemen who had been
used all their lives to be up all night, and then supped at Watier's
afterwards."

"Ah! my dear Ormsby," said Mr Berners, "do not mention Watier's; you
make my mouth water."

"Shall you stand for Birmingham, Ormsby, if there be a dissolution?"
said Lord Fitz-Heron.

"I have been asked," said Mr Ormsby; "but the House of Commons is not
the House of Commons of my time, and I have no wish to re-enter it. If I
had a taste for business, I might be a member of the Marylebone vestry."

"All I repeat," said Lord Marney to his mother, as he rose from the sofa
where he had been some time in conversation with her, "that if there be
any idea that I wish Lady Marney should be a lady in waiting, it is an
error, Lady Deloraine. I wish that to be understood. I am a domestic
man, and I wish Lady Marney to be always with me; and what I want I want
for myself. I hope in arranging the household the domestic character of
every member of it w