paper amidst
the heap of those before him, and could not, therefore, notice the
mortification so palpably expressed on Dunn's face.

"I can't find it," muttered he; "I should like, however, to show you the
memorandum itself, in which your name stands recommended to her Majesty
for a baronetcy."

Dunn's sudden start made the speaker look up; and as he turned his
eyes on him, there was no mistaking the look of determined anger on his
features.

"A baronetcy, my Lord," said he, with a slow, thick utterance, "has
become the recognized reward of a popular writer, or a fashionable
physician, whose wives acquire a sort of Brummagem rank in calling
themselves 'My Lady;' but men like myself,--men who have sustained a
party,--men who, wielding many arms of strength, have devoted them all
to the one task of maintaining in power a certain administration,
which, whatever their gifts, assuredly did not possess the art of
conciliating--"

"Come, it is a peerage you want?" broke in his Lordship, whose manner
betrayed a temper pushed to its last limits.

"If I am to trust your Lordship's tone, the pretension would seem
scarcely credible," said Dunn, calmly.

"I believe I can understand how it would appear to others. I can,
without great difficulty, imagine the light in which it would be
viewed."

"As to that, my Lord, any advancement to a man like me will evoke plenty
of animadversion. I have done too-much for your party not to have made
many enemies. The same objection would apply were I to accept the paltry
acknowledgment you so graciously contemplated for me, and which I warn
you not to offer me."

Was it the naked insolence of this speech, or was it that in uttering
it the proud pretension of the man summoned a degree of dignity to his
manner; but certainly the Minister now looked at him with a sort of
respect, he had not deigned hitherto to bestow.

"You know well, Dunn," he began, in a tone of conciliation, "that
fitness for the elevation is only one of the requirements in such a
case. There are a mass of other considerations,--the ostensible claims;
I mean such as can be-avowed and declared openly,--of the pretending
party,--the services he has rendered to the country at large,--the
merits he can show for some great public recognition. The press,
whatever be its faults nowadays, has no defects on the score of
frankness, and we shall have the question put in twenty different
quarters, 'What brilliant campaign has Mr.