name
fifty years ago. I suppose you will return to Saulsby
soon, and then, perhaps, I may be able to see you.

In the meantime I am going to Matching. [This difficulty
was worse even than the other.] Both the Duke and Duchess
have asked me, and I know that I am bound to make an
effort to face my fellow-creatures again. The horror I
feel at being stared at, as the man that was not hung as a
murderer, is stronger than I can describe; and I am well
aware that I shall be talked to and made a wonder of
on that ground. I am told that I am to be re-elected
triumphantly at Tankerville without a penny of cost
or the trouble of asking for a vote, simply because I
didn't knock poor Mr. Bonteen on the head. This to me is
abominable, but I cannot help myself, unless I resolve to
go away and hide myself. That I know cannot be right, and
therefore I had better go through it and have done with
it. Though I am to be stared at, I shall not be stared at
very long. Some other monster will come up and take my
place, and I shall be the only person who will not forget
it all. Therefore I have accepted the Duke's invitation,
and shall go to Matching some time in the end of August.
All the world is to be there.

This re-election,--and I believe I shall be re-elected
to-morrow,--would be altogether distasteful to me were it
not that I feel that I should not allow myself to be cut
to pieces by what has occurred. I shall hate to go back
to the House, and have somehow learned to dislike and
distrust all those things that used to be so fine and
lively to me. I don't think that I believe any more in the
party;--or rather in the men who lead it. I used to have a
faith that now seems to me to be marvellous. Even twelve
months ago, when I was beginning to think of standing for
Tankerville, I believed that on our side the men were
patriotic angels, and that Daubeny and his friends were
all fiends or idiots,--mostly idiots, but with a strong
dash of fiendism to control them. It has all come now to
one common level of poor human interests. I doubt whether
patriotism can stand the wear and tear and temptation of
the front benches in the House of Commons. Men are flying
at each other's throats, thrusting and parrying, making
false accusations and defences equally false, lying and
slandering,--sometimes picking and stealing,--t