ssible that a man should have risen
to such a position with so little patriotism as you attribute to our
friend, I will not pretend to say. I should think that in England
it was impossible. But of this I am sure, that the facility which
exists here for a minister or ministers to go out of office without
disturbance of the Crown, is a great blessing. You say the other
party will come in."

"That is most probable," said Silverbridge.

"With us the other party never comes in,--never has a chance of
coming in,--except once in four years, when the President is elected.
That one event binds us all for four years."

"But you do change your ministers," said Tregear.

"A secretary may quarrel with the President, or he may have the gout,
or be convicted of peculation."

"And yet you think yourselves more nearly free than we are."

"I am not so sure of that. We have had a pretty difficult task, that
of carrying on a government in a new country, which is nevertheless
more populous than almost any old country. The influxions are so
rapid, that every ten years the nature of the people is changed. It
isn't easy; and though I think on the whole we've done pretty well,
I am not going to boast that Washington is as yet the seat of a
political Paradise."

CHAPTER LXXVII

"Mabel, Good-Bye"

When Tregear first came to town with his arm in a sling, and bandages
all round him,--in order that he might be formally accepted by the
Duke,--he had himself taken to one other house besides the house in
Carlton Terrace. He went to Belgrave Square, to announce his fate to
Lady Mabel Grex;--but Lady Mabel Grex was not there. The Earl was ill
at Brighton, and Lady Mabel had gone down to nurse him. The old woman
who came to him in the hall told him that the Earl was very ill;--he
had been attacked by the gout, but in spite of the gout, and in spite
of the doctors, he had insisted on being taken to his club. Then he
had been removed to Brighton, under the doctor's advice, chiefly in
order that he might be kept out of the way of temptation. Now he was
supposed to be very ill indeed. "My Lord is so imprudent!" said the
old woman, shaking her old head in real unhappiness. For though the
Earl had been a tyrant to everyone near him, yet when a poor woman
becomes old it is something to have a tyrant to protect her. "My
Lord" always had been imprudent. Tregear knew that it had been the
theory of my Lord's life that to eat and drink and die was