e India Office.

At the committee-room he only found a few understrappers, and was
informed that everything was going on regularly. The electors were
balloting; but with the ballot,--so said the leader of the
understrappers,--there never was any excitement. The men looked
half-frightened,--as though they did not quite know whether they ought
to seize their candidate, and hold him till the constable came. They
certainly had not expected to see him there. 'Has Lord Alfred been
here?' Melmotte asked, standing in the inner room with his back to the
empty grate. No,--Lord Alfred had not been there. 'Nor Mr Grendall?'
The senior understrapper knew that Melmotte would have asked for 'his
Secretary,' and not for Mr Grendall, but for the rumours. It is so
hard not to tumble into Scylla when you are avoiding Charybdis. Mr
Grendall had not been there. Indeed, nobody had been there. 'In fact,
there is nothing more to be done, I suppose?' said Mr Melmotte. The
senior understrapper thought that there was nothing more to be done.
He left word that his brougham should be sent away, and strolled out
again on foot.

He went up into Covent Garden, where there was a polling booth. The
place seemed to him, as one of the chief centres for a contested
election, to be wonderfully quiet. He was determined to face everybody
and everything, and he went close up to the booth. Here he was
recognised by various men, mechanics chiefly, who came forward and
shook hands with him. He remained there for an hour conversing with
people, and at last made a speech to a little knot around him. He did
not allude to the rumour of yesterday, nor to the paragraph in the
'Pulpit' to which his name had not been attached; but he spoke freely
enough of the general accusations that had been brought against him
previously. He wished the electors to understand that nothing which
had been said against him made him ashamed to meet them here or
elsewhere. He was proud of his position, and proud that the electors
of Westminster should recognise it. He did not, he was glad to say,
know much of the law, but he was told that the law would protect him
from such aspersions as had been unfairly thrown upon him. He
flattered himself that he was too good an Englishman to regard the
ordinary political attacks to which candidates were, as a matter of
course, subject at elections;--and he could stretch his back to bear
perhaps a little more than these, particularly as he looked forw