all the Duke's friends."

"I hope not."

"Of course I'm speaking of political enemies. Political enemies are
often the best friends in the world; and I can assure you from my own
experience that political friends are often the bitterest enemies.
I never hated any people so much as some of our supporters." The
Duchess made a grimace, and Emily could not refrain from smiling.
"Yes, indeed. There's an old saying that misfortune makes strange
bedfellows, but political friendship makes stranger alliances than
misfortune. Perhaps you never met Sir Timothy Beeswax."

"Never."

"Well;--don't. But, as I was saying, there is no knowing who may
support whom now. If I were asked who would be Prime Minister
to-morrow, I should take half-a-dozen names and shake them in a bag."

"It is not settled then?"

"Settled! No, indeed. Nothing is settled." At that moment indeed
everything was settled, though the Duchess did not know it. "And so
we none of us can tell how Mr. Fletcher may stand with us when things
are arranged. I suppose he calls himself a Conservative?"

"Oh, yes!"

"All the Whartons, I suppose, are Conservatives,--and all the
Fletchers."

"Very nearly. Papa calls himself a Tory."

"A very much better name, to my thinking. We are all Whigs, of
course. A Palliser who was not a Whig would be held to have disgraced
himself for ever. Are not politics odd? A few years ago I only barely
knew what the word meant, and that not correctly. Lately I have been
so eager about it, that there hardly seems to be anything else left
worth living for. I suppose it's wrong, but a state of pugnacity
seems to me the greatest bliss which we can reach here on earth."

"I shouldn't like to be always fighting."

"That's because you haven't known Sir Timothy Beeswax and two or
three other gentlemen whom I could name. The day will come, I dare
say, when you will care for politics."

Emily was about to answer, hardly knowing what to say, when the
door was opened and Mrs. Roby came into the room. The lady was not
announced, and Emily had heard no knock at the door. She was forced
to go through some ceremony of introduction. "This is my aunt, Mrs.
Roby," she said. "Aunt Harriet, the Duchess of Omnium." Mrs. Roby was
beside herself,--not all with joy. That feeling would come afterwards
as she would boast to her friends of her new acquaintance. At present
there was the embarrassment of not quite knowing how to behave
herself. The Duchess bow