Mr. Finn, because he knows that Mrs. Finn is the one really
intimate female friend whom I have in the world. After all, Duke,
besides Plantagenet and the children, there are only two persons in
the world whom I really love. There are only you and she. She will
never desert me;--and you must not desert me either." Then he put his
hand behind her waist, and stooped over her and kissed her brow, and
swore to her that he would never desert her.

But what was he to do? He knew, without being told by the Duchess,
that his colleague and chief was becoming, from day to day, more
difficult to manage. He had been right enough in laying it down as a
general rule that Prime Ministers are selected for that position by
the general confidence of the House of Commons;--but he was aware
at the same time that it had hardly been so in the present instance.
There had come to be a dead-lock in affairs, during which neither
of the two old and well-recognised leaders of parties could command
a sufficient following for the carrying on of the Government. With
unusual patience these two gentlemen had now for the greater part
of three Sessions sat by, offering but little opposition to the
Coalition, but of course biding their time. They, too, called
themselves,--perhaps thought themselves,--Cincinnatuses. But their
ploughs and peaches did not suffice to them, and they longed again to
be in every mouth, and to have, if not their deeds, then even their
omissions blazoned in every paragraph. The palate accustomed to
Cayenne pepper can hardly be gratified by simple salt. When that
dead-lock had come, politicians who were really anxious for the
country had been forced to look about for a Premier,--and in the
search the old Duke had been the foremost. The Duchess had hardly
said more than the truth when she declared that her husband's
promotion had been effected by their old friend. But it is sometimes
easier to make than to unmake. Perhaps the time had now in truth
come, in which it would be better for the country that the usual
state of things should again exist. Perhaps,--nay, the Duke now
thought that he saw that it was so,--Mr. Gresham might again have a
Liberal majority at his back if the Duke of Omnium could find some
graceful mode of retiring. But who was to tell all this to the Duke
of Omnium? There was only one man in all England to whom such a task
was possible, and that was the old Duke himself,--who during the last
two years had been cons