ter to her,--bitter in his manner,--simply because he had not
wished to appear to have been taken in by her husband. Thinking of
all this, he got up, and went to his desk, and wrote her a note,
which she would receive on the following morning after her husband
had left her. It was very short.

DEAREST E.

I am so overjoyed that you are coming back to me.

A. W.

He had judged her quite rightly. The manner in which the thing had
been arranged had made her very wretched. There had been no love in
it;--nothing apparently but assertions on one side that much was
being given, and on the other acknowledgments that much was to be
received. She was aware that in this her father had condemned her
husband. She also had condemned him;--and felt, alas, that she also
had been condemned. But this little letter took away that sting. She
could read in her father's note all the action of his mind. He had
known that he was bound to acquit her, and he had done so with one of
the old long-valued expressions of his love.

VOLUME II

CHAPTER XLI

The Value of a Thick Skin

Sir Orlando Drought must have felt bitterly the quiescence with which
he sank into obscurity on the second bench on the opposite side of
the House. One great occasion he had on which it was his privilege
to explain to four or five hundred gentlemen the insuperable reasons
which caused him to break away from those right honourable friends to
act with whom had been his comfort and his duty, his great joy and
his unalloyed satisfaction. Then he occupied the best part of an hour
in abusing those friends and all their measures. This no doubt had
been a pleasure, as practice had made the manipulation of words easy
to him,--and he was able to revel in that absence of responsibility
which must be as a fresh perfumed bath to a minister just freed from
the trammels of office. But the pleasure was surely followed by much
suffering when Mr. Monk,--Mr. Monk who was to assume his place as
Leader of the House,--only took five minutes to answer him, saying
that he and his colleagues regretted much the loss of the Right
Honourable Baronet's services, but that it would hardly be necessary
for him to defend the Ministry on all those points on which it had
been attacked, as, were he to do so, he would have to repeat the
arguments by which every measure brought forward by the present
Ministry had been supported. Then Mr. Monk sat down, and the business
of the H