isunderstood woman," she told Mr. Martin,
complaining to him bitterly of the unjust attacks which were made upon
her, and declaring that "the great worry and anxiety and hard work for
ten years, alone, unaided, with increasing age and never very strong
health" were breaking her down, and "almost drove her to despair." The
situation was indeed deplorable. It seemed as if her whole existence
had gone awry; as if an irremediable antagonism had grown up between the
Queen and the nation. If Victoria had died in the early seventies, there
can be little doubt that the voice of the world would have pronounced
her a failure.

III

But she was reserved for a very different fate. The outburst of
republicanism had been in fact the last flicker of an expiring cause.
The liberal tide, which had been flowing steadily ever since the Reform
Bill, reached its height with Mr. Gladstone's first administration; and
towards the end of that administration the inevitable ebb began. The
reaction, when it came, was sudden and complete. The General Election of
1874 changed the whole face of politics. Mr. Gladstone and the Liberals
were routed; and the Tory party, for the first time for over forty
years, attained an unquestioned supremacy in England. It was obvious
that their surprising triumph was pre-eminently due to the skill
and vigour of Disraeli. He returned to office, no longer the dubious
commander of an insufficient host, but with drums beating and flags
flying, a conquering hero. And as a conquering hero Victoria welcomed
her new Prime Minister.

Then there followed six years of excitement, of enchantment, of
felicity, of glory, of romance. The amazing being, who now at last, at
the age of seventy, after a lifetime of extraordinary struggles, had
turned into reality the absurdest of his boyhood's dreams, knew well
enough how to make his own, with absolute completeness, the heart of the
Sovereign Lady whose servant, and whose master, he had so miraculously
become. In women's hearts he had always read as in an open book. His
whole career had turned upon those curious entities; and the more
curious they were, the more intimately at home with them he seemed
to be. But Lady Beaconsfield, with her cracked idolatry, and Mrs.
Brydges-Williams, with her clogs, her corpulence, and her legacy,
were gone: an even more remarkable phenomenon stood in their place. He
surveyed what was before him with the eye of a past-master; and he was
not for a m