ening in the smoking-room
with half a score of the most eminent men in political England; and
others whose recognition was not to be despised.

As there were many guests at the castle the dinner took place in the
banquet-hall, but at six or eight round tables, and Gwynne had found
himself distinguished above all the other young men present by being
seated at that of the duchess. The prime-minister, the chancellor of the
exchequer, two other members of the cabinet, and an ambassador were his
companions. All the women were of exalted station, but for this fact
Gwynne cared nothing, being entirely free of that snobbery which so
often agitates even the best-born of the world; indeed, would have been
resentful of the ripe age of the ladies--accumulated with their
political values--had it not been for the tremendous compliment paid to
his personal achievement.

He could not sit beside her grace in that nest of titles, but at the
suggestion of the duke he had been placed as nearly opposite her as the
round table permitted, and he soon forgot the broken circle of
immemorial bosoms in the manifest disapproval of the Conservative
premier towards himself, and in the attitude of the other men, which,
whether hostile or friendly, evinced a recognition of the rising star
and a tolerance of his ideas.

There is always a glamour about a very young man who has given
cumulative evidence of genius and compelled the attention of the world,
always distrustful of youth. His enemies had long since--and he was but
thirty--admitted his gift for letters, fiercely as they might scoff at
his conclusions; and his rewards for bravery in the field had aroused no
adverse comment. But while his most persistent critics had never
discovered him truthless and corruptible, his political sincerity had
been called into question even by his colleagues, and almost unanimously
by the opposition. His principles were by no means so rigidly outlined
as those of the great Whig families, nor of the men who belonged to the
Liberal party as a natural result of their more modest station and
protesting spirit. He was strong on the fundamental principles of the
party, and far more energetic in his advocacy of the rights and needs of
the working-man than any Liberal of his own class, but he rarely, if
ever, alluded to the question of Home Rule; a question somnolent but by
no means dead; and the omission savored of Unionism, in spite of his
avowed scorn of all compromis