You know how I love
him, but I am perfectly convinced he prefers my letters to my society."

"You see what it is to be a Madame de Sevigne," said Lady Roehampton,
trying to give a playful tone to the conversation.

"You jest," said Lady Montfort; "I am quite serious. No one can deceive
me; would that they could! I have the fatal gift of reading persons, and
penetrating motives, however deep or complicated their character, and
what I tell you about Lord Montfort is unhappily too true."

In the meantime, while this interesting conversation was taking place,
the gentleman who had been the object of Lady Montfort's eulogium, the
gentleman who always out-manoeuvred her friends at every corner, was,
though it was approaching midnight, walking up and down Carlton Terrace
with an agitated and indignant countenance, and not alone.

"I tell you, Mr. Waldershare, I know it; I have it almost from Lord
Beaumaris himself; he has declined to support our man, and no doubt will
give his influence to the enemy."

"I do not believe that Lord Beaumaris has made any engagement whatever."

"A pretty state of affairs!" exclaimed Mr. Tadpole. "I do not know what
the world has come to. Here are gentlemen expecting high places in the
Household, and under-secretaryships of state, and actually giving away
our seats to our opponents."

"There is some family engagement about this seat between the Houses of
Beaumaris and Montfort, and Lord Beaumaris, who is a young man, and
who does not know as much about these things as you and I do, naturally
wants not to make a mistake. But he has promised nothing and nobody.
I know, I might almost say I saw the letter, that he wrote to Lord
Montfort this day, asking for an interview to-morrow morning on the
matter, and Lord Montfort has given him an appointment for to-morrow.
This I know."

"Well, I must leave it to you," said Mr. Tadpole. "You must remember
what we are fighting for. The constitution is at stake."

"And the Church," said Waldershare.

"And the landed interest, you may rely upon it," said Mr. Tadpole.

"And your Lordship of the Treasury _in posse_, Tadpole. Truly it is a
great stake."

CHAPTER LXXI

The interview between the heads of the two great houses of Montfort and
Beaumaris, on which the fate of a ministry might depend, for it should
always be recollected that it was only by a majority of one that Sir
Robert Peel had necessitated the dissolution of parliament, was not
ca