Omnium had stepped into
Mr. Bonteen's shoes, the general opinion certainly coincided with
that given by the Duke of St. Bungay. It was not only that the
late Chancellor of the Exchequer should not have consented to fill
so low an office, or that the Duke of Omnium should have better
known his own place, or that he should not have succeeded a man so
insignificant as Mr. Bonteen. These things, no doubt, were said,--but
more was said also. It was thought that he should not have gone to
an office which had been rendered vacant by the murder of a man
who had been placed there merely to assist himself. If the present
arrangement was good, why should it not have been made independently
of Mr. Bonteen? Questions were asked about it in both Houses, and the
transfer no doubt did have the effect of lowering the man in the
estimation of the political world. He himself felt that he did not
stand so high with his colleagues as when he was Chancellor of the
Exchequer; not even so high as when he held the Privy Seal. In the
printed lists of those who attended the Cabinets his name generally
was placed last, and an opponent on one occasion thought, or
pretended to think, that he was no more than Postmaster-General. He
determined to bear all this without wincing,--but he did wince. He
would not own to himself that he had been wrong, but he was sore,--as
a man is sore who doubts about his own conduct; and he was not the
less so because he strove to bear his wife's sarcasms without showing
that they pained him.

"They say that poor Lord Fawn is losing his mind," she said to him.

"Lord Fawn! I haven't heard anything about it."

"He was engaged to Lady Eustace once, you remember. They say that
he'll be made to declare why he didn't marry her if this bigamy case
goes on. And then it's so unfortunate that he should have seen the
man in the grey coat; I hope he won't have to resign."

"I hope not, indeed."

"Because, of course, you'd have to take his place as
Under-Secretary." This was very awkward;--but the husband only
smiled, and expressed a hope that if he did so he might himself be
equal to his new duties. "By the bye, Plantagenet, what do you mean
to do about the jewels?"

"I haven't thought about them. Madame Goesler had better take them."

"But she won't."

"I suppose they had better be sold."

"By auction?"

"That would be the proper way."

"I shouldn't like that at all. Couldn't we buy them ourselves, and
let the mone