y will make their chargers consuls. It
beats the Bed-Chamber Plot, and I always admired that. One hundred days!
Why, the Second Empire lasted only one hundred days. But what days! what
excitement! They were worth a hundred years at Elba."

"Your friends do not seem quite so pleased as you are," said Endymion.

"My friends, as you call them, are old fogies, and want to divide the
spoil among the ancient hands. It will be a great thing for Peel to get
rid of some of these old friends. A dissolution permits the powerful to
show their power. There is Beaumaris, for example; now he will have an
opportunity of letting them know who Lord Beaumaris is. I have a dream;
he must be Master of the Horse. I shall never rest till I see Imogene
riding in that golden coach, and breaking the line with all the honours
of royalty."

"Mr. Ferrars," said the editor of a newspaper, seizing his watched-for
opportunity as Waldershare and Endymion separated, "do you think you
could favour me this evening with Mr. Sidney Wilton's address? We have
always supported Mr. Wilton's views on the corn laws, and if put clearly
and powerfully before the country at this junction, the effect might be
great, perhaps even, if sustained, decisive."

Eight-and-forty hours and more had elapsed since the conversation
between Endymion and Lady Montfort; they had not been happy days. For
the first time during their acquaintance there had been constraint and
embarrassment between them. Lady Montfort no longer opposed his views,
but she did not approve them. She avoided the subject; she looked
uninterested in all that was going on around her; talked of joining her
lord and going a-fishing; felt he was right in his views of life. "Dear
Simon was always right," and then she sighed, and then she shrugged
her pretty shoulders. Endymion, though he called on her as usual, found
there was nothing to converse about; politics seemed tacitly forbidden,
and when he attempted small talk Lady Montfort seemed absent--and once
absolutely yawned.

What amazed Endymion still more was, that, under these rather
distressing circumstances, he did not find adequate support and sympathy
in his sister. Lady Roehampton did not question the propriety of his
decision, but she seemed quite as unhappy and as dissatisfied as Lady
Montfort.

"What you say, dearest Endymion, is quite unanswerable, and I alone
perhaps can really know that; but what I feel is, I have failed in life.
My dream wa