Vavasour in a whisper;
"but Lady Firebrace has a sort of promise that in the event of a change
of government, we shall be in the first batch of peers."

Mr Hatton shook his head with a slight smile of contemptuous
incredulity.

"Sir Robert," he said, "will make no peers; take my word for that. The
whigs and I have so deluged the House of Lords, that you may rely upon
it as a secret of state, that if the tories come in, there will be no
peers made. I know the Queen is sensitively alive to the cheapening of
all honours of late years. If the whigs go out to-morrow, mark me, they
will disappoint all their friends. Their underlings have promised so
many, that treachery is inevitable, and if they deceive some they may
as well deceive all. Perhaps they may distribute a coronet or two among
themselves: and I shall this year make three: and those are the only
additions to the peerage which will occur for many years. You may rely
on that. For the tories will make none, and I have some thoughts of
retiring from business."

It is difficult to express the astonishment, the perplexity, the
agitation, that pervaded the countenance of Sir Vavasour while his
companion thus coolly delivered himself. High hopes extinguished and
excited at the same moment; cherished promises vanishing, mysterious
expectations rising up; revelations of astounding state secrets; chief
ministers voluntarily renouncing their highest means of influence, and
an obscure private individual distributing those distinctions which
sovereigns were obliged to hoard, and to obtain which the first men in
the country were ready to injure their estates and to sacrifice their
honour! At length Sir Vavasour said, "You amaze me Mr Hatton. I could
mention to you twenty members of Boodle's, at least, who believe they
will be made peers the moment the tories come in."

"Not a man of them," said Hatton peremptorily. "Tell me one of their
names, and I will tell you whether they will be made peers."

"Well then there is Mr Tubbe Sweete, a county member, and his son in
parliament too--I know he has a promise."

"I repeat to you, Sir Vavasour, the tories will not make a single peer;
the candidates must come to me; and I ask you what can I do for a Tubbe
Sweete, the son of a Jamaica cooper? Are there any old families among
your twenty members of Brookes'?"

"Why I can hardly say," said Sir Vavasour; "there is Sir Charles
Featherly, an old baronet."

"The founder a lord mayor