electors from the top of the porch
over the hotel door at Courcy was not founded on fact. No doubt she
was at Courcy, and her carriage stopped at the hotel; but neither
there nor elsewhere did she make any public exhibition. "They must
have mistaken me for Mrs. Proudie," she said, when the rumour reached
her ears. But there was, alas! one great element of failure on Miss
Dunstable's side of the battle. Mr. Sowerby himself could not be
induced to fight it as became a man. Any positive injunctions that
were laid upon him he did, in a sort, obey. It had been a part of the
bargain that he should stand the contest, and from that bargain he
could not well go back; but he had not the spirit left to him for any
true fighting on his own part. He could not go up on the hustings,
and there defy the duke. Early in the affair Mr. Fothergill
challenged him to do so, and Mr. Sowerby never took up the gauntlet.

"We have heard," said Mr. Fothergill, in that great speech which he
made at the Omnium Arms at Silverbridge--"we have heard much during
this election of the Duke of Omnium, and of the injuries which he is
supposed to have inflicted on one of the candidates. The duke's name
is very frequent in the mouths of the gentlemen--and of the lady--who
support Mr. Sowerby's claims. But I do not think that Mr. Sowerby
himself has dared to say much about the duke. I defy Mr. Sowerby to
mention the duke's name upon the hustings." And it so happened that
Mr. Sowerby never did mention the duke's name.

It is ill fighting when the spirit is gone, and Mr. Sowerby's spirit
for such things was now well nigh broken. It is true that he had
escaped from the net in which the duke, by Mr. Fothergill's aid,
had entangled him; but he had only broken out of one captivity into
another. Money is a serious thing; and when gone cannot be had back
by a shuffle in the game, or a fortunate blow with the battledore, as
may political power, or reputation, or fashion. One hundred thousand
pounds gone, must remain as gone, let the person who claims to have
had the honour of advancing it be Mrs. B. or my Lord C. No lucky
dodge can erase such a claim from the things that be--unless, indeed,
such dodge be possible as Mr. Sowerby tried with Miss Dunstable. It
was better for him, undoubtedly, to have the lady for a creditor than
the duke, seeing that it was possible for him to live as a tenant in
his own old house under the lady's reign. But this he found to be a
sad