there, declaring that her
petition had been that she might come to see, not to be seen,--as if,
she cried out tearfully, the two wishes must not necessarily exist
together, like the masculine and the feminine in this world! Prince Hal,
acting the most profligate period of his career, espied her behind
the Mousquetaire's moustache, and did not fail to make much of his
discovery. In a perilous moment for the reputation of the Ball, my
father handed him over to Gascoigne, and conducted Jenny in a leisurely
walk on his arm out of the rooms.

'Il est comme les Romains,' she said: 'he never despairs of himself. It
is a Jupiter! If he must punish you he confers a dignity in doing it.
Now I comprehend, that with such women as these grandes dames Anglaises
I should have done him harm but for his greatness of soul.'

Some harm, I fancied, must have been done, in spite of his boast to the
contrary. He had to be in London every other night, and there were tales
current of intrigues against him which had their sources from very lofty
regions. But in Chippenden he threw off London, just as lightly as in
London he discarded Chippenden. No symptom of personal discouragement,
or of fatigue, was betrayed in his face. I spoke once of that paragraph
purporting to emanate from Prince Ernest.

'It may,' he said. 'Business! Richie.'

He set to counting the promises of votes, disdaining fears and
reflections. Concerts, cricket-matches, Balls, dinner-parties, and the
round of the canvass, and speech-making at our gatherings, occupied
every minute of my time, except on Saturday evenings, when I rode over
to Riversley with Temple to spend the Sunday. Temple, always willing
to play second to me, and a trifle melancholy under his partial
eclipse-which, perhaps, suggested the loss of Janet to him--would have
it that this election was one of the realizations of our boyish dreams
of greatness. The ladies were working rosettes for me. My aunt Dorothy
talked very anxiously about the day appointed by my father to repay the
large sum expended. All hung upon that day, she said, speaking from her
knowledge of the squire. She was moved to an extreme distress by the
subject.

'He is confident, Harry; but where can he obtain the money? If your
grandfather sees it invested in your name in Government securities, he
will be satisfied, not otherwise: nothing less will satisfy him; and if
that is not done, he will join you and your father together in his mind