vatives who dared to rebel against their Conservative
leaders was swelled by the course which the debate had taken. There
were certain men who could not endure to be twitted with having
deserted the principles of their lives, when it was clear that
nothing was to be gained by the party by such desertion.

CHAPTER XXXVII

The Conspiracy

On the morning following the great division Phineas was with his
friend, Lord Cantrip, by eleven o'clock; and Lord Cantrip, when
he had read the two letters in which were comprised the whole
correspondence, made to our unhappy hero the following little speech.
"I do not think that you can do anything. Indeed, I am sure that Mr.
Monk is quite right. I don't quite see what it is that you wish to
do. Privately,--between our two selves,--I do not hesitate to say
that Mr. Bonteen has intended to be ill-natured. I fancy that he is
an ill-natured--or at any rate a jealous--man; and that he would be
willing to run down a competitor in the race who had made his running
after a fashion different from his own. Bonteen has been a useful
man,--a very useful man; and the more so perhaps because he has not
entertained any high political theory of his own. You have chosen to
do so,--and undoubtedly when you and Monk left us, to our very great
regret, you did scuttle the ship."

"We had no intention of that kind."

"Do not suppose that I blame you. That which was odious to the eyes
of Mr. Bonteen was to my thinking high and honourable conduct. I
have known the same thing done by members of a Government perhaps
half-a-dozen times, and the men by whom it has been done have been
the best and noblest of our modern statesmen. There has generally
been a hard contest in the man's breast between loyalty to his
party and strong personal convictions, the result of which has been
an inability on the part of the struggler to give even a silent
support to a measure which he has disapproved. That inability is no
doubt troublesome at the time to the colleagues of the seceder, and
constitutes an offence hardly to be pardoned by such gentlemen as Mr.
Bonteen."

"For Mr. Bonteen personally I care nothing."

"But of course you must endure the ill-effects of his influence,--be
they what they may. When you seceded from our Government you looked
for certain adverse consequences. If you did not, where was your
self-sacrifice? That such men as Mr. Bonteen should feel that you had
scuttled the ship, and be unab