to hear how her husband would acquit himself in his task.
The wives and daughters of all the ministers were there,--excepting
the wife of the Prime Minister. There never had been, in the memory
of them all, a matter that was so interesting to them, for it was
the only matter they remembered in which a woman's conduct might
probably be called in question in the House of Commons. And the seats
appropriated to peers were so crammed that above a dozen grey-headed
old lords were standing in the passage which divides them from the
common strangers. After all it was not, in truth, much of an affair.
A very little man indeed had calumniated the conduct of a minister
of the Crown, till it had been thought well that the minister should
defend himself. No one really believed that the Duke had committed
any great offence. At the worst it was no more than indiscretion,
which was noticeable only because a Prime Minister should never be
indiscreet. Had the taxation of the whole country for the next year
been in dispute, there would have been no such interest felt. Had the
welfare of the Indian Empire occupied the House, the House would have
been empty. But the hope that a certain woman's name would have to be
mentioned, crammed it from the floor to the ceiling.

The reader need not be told that that name was not mentioned. Our old
friend Phineas, on rising to his legs, first apologised for doing so
in place of the Chancellor of the Exchequer. But perhaps the House
would accept a statement from him, as the noble Duke at the head of
the Government had asked him to make it. Then he made his statement.
"Perhaps," he said, "no falser accusation than this had ever been
brought forward against a minister of the Crown, for it specially
charged his noble friend with resorting to the employment of
unconstitutional practices to bolster up his parliamentary support,
whereas it was known by everybody that there would have been no
matter for accusation at all had not the Duke of his own motion
abandoned a recognised privilege, because, in his opinion, the
exercise of that privilege was opposed to the spirit of the
Constitution. Had the noble Duke simply nominated a candidate, as
candidates had been nominated at Silverbridge for centuries past,
that candidate would have been returned with absolute certainty,
and there would have been no word spoken on the subject. It was not,
perhaps, for him, who had the honour of serving under his Grace, and
who