am sure you are not."

"Nor am I self-confident. I am obliged to seek comfort from such
scraps of encouragement as may have fallen in my way here and there.
I once did think that you intended to love me."

"Does love go by intentions?"

"I think so,--frequently with men, and much more so with girls."

"It will never go so with me. I shall never intend to love any one.
If I ever love any man it will be because I am made to do so, despite
my intentions."

"As a fortress is taken?"

"Well,--if you like to put it so. Only I claim this advantage,--that
I can always get rid of my enemy when he bores me."

"Am I boring you now?"

"I didn't say so. Here is Lord Chiltern again, and I know by the
rattle of his horse's feet that something is the matter."

Lord Chiltern came up full of wrath. One of the men's horses was
thoroughly broken down, and, as the Master said, wasn't worth the
saddle he carried. He didn't care a ---- for the horse, but the man
hadn't told him. "At this rate there won't be anything to carry
anybody by Christmas."

"You'll have to buy some more," said Gerard Maule.

"Buy some more!" said Lord Chiltern, turning round, and looking at
the man. "He talks of buying horses as he would sugar plums!" Then
they trotted in at the gate, and in two minutes were at the hall
door.

CHAPTER VIII

The Address

Before the 11th of November, the day on which Parliament was to meet,
the whole country was in a hubbub. Consternation and triumph were
perhaps equally predominant, and equally strong. There were those who
declared that now at length was Great Britain to be ruined in actual
present truth; and those who asserted that, of a sudden, after a
fashion so wholly unexpected as to be divine,--as great fires, great
famines, and great wars are called divine,--a mighty hand had been
stretched out to take away the remaining incubus of superstition,
priestcraft, and bigotry under which England had hitherto been
labouring. The proposed disestablishment of the State Church of
England was, of course, the subject of this diversity of opinion.

And there was not only diversity, but with it great confusion. The
political feelings of the country are, as a rule, so well marked that
it is easy, as to almost every question, to separate the sheep from
the goats. With but few exceptions one can tell where to look for the
supporters and where for the opponents of one measure or of another.
Meetings are called in this