was he to find
a requisite number of householders prepared to return him? But as
he went up to London he told himself that the air of the House of
Commons was now the very breath of his nostrils. Life to him without
it would be no life. To have come within the reach of the good things
of political life, to have made his mark so as to have almost insured
future success, to have been the petted young official aspirant of
the day,--and then to sink down into the miserable platitudes of
private life, to undergo daily attendance in law-courts without
a brief, to listen to men who had come to be much below him in
estimation and social intercourse, to sit in a wretched chamber up
three pairs of stairs at Lincoln's Inn, whereas he was now at this
moment provided with a gorgeous apartment looking out into the Park
from the Colonial Office in Downing Street, to be attended by a
mongrel between a clerk and an errand boy at 17s. 6d. a week instead
of by a private secretary who was the son of an earl's sister, and
was petted by countesses' daughters innumerable,--all this would
surely break his heart. He could have done it, so he told himself,
and could have taken glory in doing it, had not these other things
come in his way. But the other things had come. He had run the risk,
and had thrown the dice. And now when the game was so nearly won,
must it be that everything should be lost at last?

He knew that nothing was to be gained by melancholy looks at his
club, or by show of wretchedness at his office. London was very
empty; but the approaching elections still kept some there who
otherwise would have been looking after the first flush of pheasants.
Barrington Erle was there, and was not long in asking Phineas what
were his views.

"Ah;--that is so hard to say. Ratler told me that he would be looking
about."

"Ratler is very well in the House," said Barrington, "but he is of no
use for anything beyond it. I suppose you were not brought up at the
London University?"

"Oh no," said Phineas, remembering the glories of Trinity.

"Because there would have been an opening. What do you say to
Stratford,--the new Essex borough?"

"Broadbury the brewer is there already!"

"Yes;--and ready to spend any money you like to name. Let me see.
Loughton is grouped with Smotherem, and Walker is a deal too strong
at Smotherem to hear of any other claim. I don't think we could dare
to propose it. There are the Chelsea hamlets, but it will ta