have it;
so have great debaters and great reformers,--that is, reformers who can
destroy, but not necessarily reconstruct. So, too, in the bearing of the
man there was a hardy self-confidence, much too simple and unaffected
for his worst enemy to call it self-conceit. It was the bearing of one
who knew how to maintain personal dignity without seeming to care about
it. Never servile to the great, never arrogant to the little; so little
over-refined that it was never vulgar,--a popular bearing.

The room in which these gentlemen were seated was separated from the
general suite of apartments by a lobby off the landing-place, and served
for Lady Beaumanoir's boudoir. Very pretty it was, but simply furnished,
with chintz draperies. The walls were adorned with drawings in
water-colours, and precious specimens of china on fanciful Parian
brackets. At one corner, by a window that looked southward and opened
on a spacious balcony, glazed in and filled with flowers, stood one of
those high trellised screens, first invented, I believe, in Vienna, and
along which ivy is so trained as to form an arbour.

The recess thus constructed, and which was completely out of sight from
the rest of the room, was the hostess's favourite writing-nook. The two
men I have described were seated near the screen, and had certainly no
suspicion that any one could be behind it.

"Yes," said Mr. Danvers, from an ottoman niched in another recess of the
room, "I think there will be an opening at Saxboro' soon: Milroy wants a
Colonial Government; and if we can reconstruct the Cabinet as I propose,
he would get one. Saxboro' would thus be vacant. But, my dear fellow,
Saxboro' is a place to be wooed through love, and only won through
money. It demands liberalism from a candidate,--two kinds of liberalism
seldom united; the liberalism in opinion which is natural enough to a
very poor man, and the liberalism in expenditure which is scarcely to
be obtained except from a very rich one. You may compute the cost of
Saxboro' at L3000 to get in, and about L2000 more to defend your seat
against a petition,--the defeated candidate nearly always petitions.
L5000 is a large sum; and the worst of it is, that the extreme opinions
to which the member for Saxboro' must pledge himself are a drawback to
an official career. Violent politicians are not the best raw material
out of which to manufacture fortunate placemen."

"The opinions do not so much matter; the expense doe