d Bobbie. "And how's Lady Lucy?"

Lady Niton moved impatiently.

"Lucy would be all right if her son wouldn't join a set of traitors in
jockeying the man who put him into Parliament, and has been Lucy's
quasi-husband for twenty years!"

"Oh, you think he _is_ in the plot?"

"Of course, Lucy swears he isn't. But if not--why isn't Ferrier here?
His own election was over a week ago. In the natural course of things he
would have been staying here since then, and speaking for Oliver. Not a
word of it! I'm glad he's shown a little spirit at last! He's put up
with it about enough."

"And Lady Lucy's fretting?"

"She don't like it--particularly when he comes to stay with Sir James
Chide and not at Tallyn. Such a thing has never happened before."

"Poor old Ferrier!" said Bobbie, with a shrug of the shoulders.

Lady Niton drew herself up fiercely.

"Don't pity your betters, sir! It's disrespectful."

Bobbie smiled. "You know the Ministry's resigned?"

"About time! What have they been hanging on for so long?"

"Well, it's done at last. I found a wire from the club waiting for me
here. The Queen has sent for Broadstone, and the fat's all in the fire."

The two fell into an excited discussion of the situation. The two rival
heroes of the electoral six weeks on the Liberal side had been, of
course, Ferrier and Lord Philip. Lord Philip had conducted an
astonishing campaign in the Midlands, through a series of speeches of
almost revolutionary violence, containing many veiled, or scarcely
veiled, attacks on Ferrier. Ferrier, on the whole held the North; but
the candidates in the Midlands had been greatly affected by Lord Philip
and Lord Philip's speeches, and a contagious enthusiasm had spread
through whole districts, carrying in the Liberal candidates with a rush.
In the West and South, too, where the Darcy family had many friends and
large estates, the Liberal nominees had shown a strong tendency to adopt
Lord Philip's programme and profess enthusiastic admiration for its
author. So that there were now two kings of Brentford. Lord Philip's
fortunes had risen to a threatening height, and the whole interest of
the Cabinet-making just beginning lay in the contest which it inevitably
implied between Ferrier and his new but formidable lieutenant. It was
said that Lord Philip had retired to his tent--alias, his
Northamptonshire house--and did not mean to budge thence till he had
got all he wanted out of the veteran Premier.