ent
old Tory Sir Orlando Drought should be asked to put up with the
Post-office or should be allowed to remain at the Colonies,--the
younger Duke did not care to trouble himself till the elder
should have come to his assistance. But his own position and his
questionable capacity for filling it,--that occupied all his mind. If
nominally first he would be really first. Of so much it seemed to him
that his honour required him to assure himself. To be a _faineant_
ruler was in direct antagonism both to his conscience and his
predilections. To call himself by a great name before the world, and
then to be something infinitely less than that name, would be to him
a degradation. But though he felt fixed as to that, he was by no
means assured as to that other point, which to most men firm in their
resolves as he was, and backed up as he had been by the confidence of
others, would be cause of small hesitation. He did doubt his ability
to fill that place which it would now be his duty to occupy. He more
than doubted. He told himself again and again that there was wanting
to him a certain noble capacity for commanding support and homage
from other men. With things and facts he could deal, but human beings
had not opened themselves to him. But now it was too late! and
yet,--as he said to his wife,--to fail would break his heart! No
ambition had prompted him. He was sure of himself there. One only
consideration had forced him into this great danger, and that had
been the assurance of others that it was his manifest duty to
encounter it. And now there was clearly no escape,--no escape
compatible with that clean-handed truth from which it was not
possible for him to swerve. He might create difficulties in order
that through them a way might still be opened to him of restoring to
the Queen the commission which had been entrusted to him. He might
insist on this or that impossible concession. But the memory of
escape such as that would break his heart as surely as the failure.

When the Duke was announced he rose to greet his old friend almost
with fervour. "It is a shame," he said, "to bring you out so late. I
ought to have gone to you."

"Not at all. It is always the rule in these cases that the man who
has most to do should fix himself as well as he can where others may
be able to find him." The Duke of St. Bungay was an old man, between
seventy and eighty, with hair nearly white, and who on entering
the room had to unfold himself o