ise inexplicable."

"And to whom ought you to say these things if not to me," said Lady
Montfort, "whom you called just now your best and dearest friend? I wish
to be such to you. Perhaps I have been too eager, but, at any rate, it
was eagerness for your welfare. Let us then be calm. Speak to me as
you would to Myra. I cannot be your twin, but I can be your sister in
feeling."

He took her hand and gently pressed it to his lips; his eyes would have
been bedewed, had not the dreadful sorrows and trials of his life much
checked his native susceptibility. Then speaking in a serious tone,
he said, "I am not without ambition, dearest Lady Montfort; I have had
visions which would satisfy even you; but partly from my temperament,
still more perhaps from the vicissitudes of my life, I have considerable
waiting powers. I think if one is patient and watches, all will come of
which one is capable; but no one can be patient who is not independent.
My wants are moderate, but their fulfilment must be certain. The
break-up of the government, which deprives me of my salary as a private
secretary, deprives me of luxuries which I can do without--a horse,
a brougham, a stall at the play, a flower in my button-hole--but my
clerkship is my freehold. As long as I possess it, I can study, I can
work, I can watch and comprehend all the machinery of government. I can
move in society, without which a public man, whatever his talents or
acquirements, is in life playing at blind-man's buff. I must sacrifice
this citadel of my life if I go into parliament. Do not be offended,
therefore, if I say to you, as I shall say to Myra, I have made up my
mind not to surrender it. It is true I have the misfortune to be a year
older than Charles Fox when he entered the senate, but even with this
great disadvantage I am sometimes conceited enough to believe that I
shall succeed, and to back myself against the field."

CHAPTER LXVII

Mr. Waldershare was delighted when the great secret was out, and he
found that the ministry intended to dissolve, and not resign. It was on
a Monday that Lord John Russell made this announcement, and Waldershare
met Endymion in the lobby of the House of Commons. "I congratulate you,
my dear boy; your fellows, at least, have pluck. If they lose, which I
think they will, they will have gained at least three months of power,
and irresponsible power. Why! they may do anything in the interval, and
no doubt will. You will see; the