less?"

"Heavens and earth! Plantagenet;--who else? Is there another man in
the world would come into his own house, among his own guests, and
speak only to one person? And, then, think of it! Popularity is
the staff on which alone Ministers can lean in this country with
security."

"Political but not social popularity."

"You know as well as I do that the two go together. We've seen enough
of that even in our day. What broke up Mr. Gresham's Ministry? If
he had stayed away people might have thought that he was reading
blue-books, or calculating coinage, or preparing a speech. That would
have been much better. But he comes in and sits for half-an-hour
whispering to another duke! I hate dukes!"

"He talks to the Duke of St. Bungay because there is no one he trusts
so much. A few years ago it would have been Mr. Mildmay."

"My dear," said the Duchess angrily, "you treat me as though I were
a child. Of course I know why he chooses that old man out of all the
crowd. I don't suppose he does it from any stupid pride of rank.
I know very well what set of ideas govern him. But that isn't the
point. He has to reflect what others think of it, and to endeavour
to do what will please them. There was I telling tarradiddles by the
yard to that old oaf, Sir Orlando Drought, when a confidential word
from Plantagenet would have had ten times more effect. And why can't
he speak a word to the people's wives? They wouldn't bite him. He has
got to say a few words to you sometimes,--to whom it doesn't signify,
my dear--"

"I don't know about that."

"But he never speaks to another woman. He was here this evening
for exactly forty minutes, and he didn't open his lips to a female
creature. I watched him. How on earth am I to pull him through if he
goes on in that way? Yes, Locock, I'll go to bed, and I don't think
I'll get up for a week."

CHAPTER XII

The Gathering of Clouds

Throughout June and the first week of July the affairs of the
Ministry went on successfully, in spite of the social sins of the
Duke and the occasional despair of the Duchess. There had been many
politicians who had thought, or had, at any rate, predicted, that
the Coalition Ministry would not live a month. There had been
men, such as Lord Fawn on one side and Mr. Boffin on the other,
who had found themselves stranded disagreeably,--with no certain
position,--unwilling to sit immediately behind a Treasury bench from
which they were excluded, and to