than he had ever before made; but the subject had been
unlucky, and could not, in his hands, be brought round to anything
tender; so he resolved to postpone his gallantry till the London
spring should make it easy, and felt as he did so that he was
relieved for the time from a heavy weight.

"Good-bye, Lady Dumbello," he said, on the next evening. "I start
early to-morrow morning."

"Good-bye, Mr Palliser."

As she spoke she smiled ever so sweetly, but she certainly had not
learned to call him Plantagenet as yet. He went up to London and
immediately got himself to work. The accurate and voluminous speech
came off with considerable credit to himself,--credit of that
quiet, enduring kind which is accorded to such men. The speech was
respectable, dull, and correct. Men listened to it, or sat with their
hats over their eyes, asleep, pretending to do so; and the daily
_Jupiter_ in the morning had a leading article about it, which,
however, left the reader at its close altogether in doubt whether Mr
Palliser might be supposed to be a great financial pundit or no. Mr
Palliser might become a shining light to the moneyed world, and a
glory to the banking interests; he might be a future Chancellor of
the Exchequer. But then again, it might turn out that, in these
affairs, he was a mere _ignis fatuus_, a blind guide,--a man to be
laid aside as very respectable, but of no depth. Who, then, at the
present time, could judiciously risk his credit by declaring whether
Mr Palliser understood his subject or did not understand it? We are
not content in looking to our newspapers for all the information that
earth and human intellect can afford; but we demand from them what
we might demand if a daily sheet could come to us from the world of
spirits. The result, of course, is this,--that the papers do pretend
that they have come daily from the world of spirits; but the oracles
are very doubtful, as were those of old.

Plantagenet Palliser, though he was contented with this article,
felt, as he sat in his chambers in the Albany, that something else
was wanting to his happiness. This sort of life was all very well.
Ambition was a grand thing, and it became him, as a Palliser and a
future peer, to make politics his profession. But might he not spare
an hour or two for Amaryllis in the shade? Was it not hard, this life
of his? Since he had been told that Lady Dumbello smiled upon him, he
had certainly thought more about her smiles than had