entative of
the Queen--almost as if he were an American Midas of the fourth or fifth
class. But as to his large leisure people began to say things. It began
to be hinted in leading articles that it was scarcely fair that Sir
Rupert's constituents should be disfranchised because it pleased a
disappointed politician to drift idly about the world. These hints had
their effect upon the disfranchised constituents, who began to grumble.
The Conservative Committee was goaded almost to the point of addressing
a remonstrance to Sir Rupert, then in the interior of Japan, urging him
to return or resign, when the need for any such action was taken out of
their hands by a somewhat unexpected General Election. Sir Rupert
telegraphed back to announce his intention of remaining abroad for the
present, and of not, therefore, proposing to seek just then the
suffrages of the electors. Sidney Blenheim succeeded in getting a close
personal friend of his own, who was also his private secretary, accepted
by the Conservative Committee, and he was returned at the head of the
poll by a slightly decreased majority.

Sir Rupert remained away from England for several years longer. After he
had gone round the world in the most thorough sense, he revisited many
places where he had been before, and stayed there for longer periods. It
began to seem as if he did not really intend to return to England at
all. His communications with his friends grew fewer and shorter, but
wandering Parliamentarians in the recess occasionally came across him in
the course of an extended holiday, and always found him affable,
interested to animation in home politics, and always suggesting by his
manner, though never in his speech, that he would some day return to his
old place and his old fame. Of Sidney Blenheim he spoke with an equable,
impartial composure.

At last one day he did come home. He had been in the United States
during the closing years of the American Civil War, and in Washington,
when peace was concluded, he had met at the English Ministry a young
girl of great beauty, of a family that was old for America, that was
wealthy, though not wealthy for America. He fell in love with her, wooed
her, and was accepted. They were married in Washington, and soon after
the marriage they returned to England. They settled down for a while at
the old home of the Langleys, the home whose site had been the home of
the race ever since the Conquest. Part of an old Norman towe