indly forgetfulness" as the
best treatment. The Daily News, in a spirited article called "The
Great Betrayal," washed its hands of Mr. Vennard unless he donned the
white sheet of the penitent. Later in the day I got The Westminster
Gazette, and found an ingenious leader which proved that the speech in
no way conflicted with Liberal principles, and was capable of a quite
ordinary explanation. Then I went to see Lady Caerlaverock.

I found my aunt almost in tears.

"What has happened?" she cried. "What have we done that we should be
punished in this awful way? And to think that the blow fell in this
house? Caerlaverock--we all--thought Mr. Vennard so strange last night,
and Lady Lavinia told me that Mr. Cargill was perfectly horrible. I
suppose it must be the heat and the strain of the session. And that
poor Lord Mulross, who was always so wise, should be stricken down at
this crisis!"

I did not say that I thought Mulross's accident a merciful
dispensation. I was far more afraid of him than of all the others, for
if with his reputation for sanity he chose to run amok, he would be
taken seriously. He was better in bed than affixing a flea to Von
Kladow's ear.

"Caerlaverock was with the Prime Minister this morning," my aunt went
on. "He is going to make a statement in the Lords tomorrow to try to
cover Mr. Vennard's folly. They are very anxious about what Mr.
Cargill will do today. He is addressing the National Convention of
Young Liberals at Oldham this afternoon, and though they have sent him
a dozen telegrams they can get no answer. Caerlaverock went to Downing
Street an hour ago to get news."

There was the sound of an electric brougham stopping in the square
below, and we both listened with a premonition of disaster. A minute
later Caerlaverock entered the room, and with him the Prime Minister.
The cheerful, eupeptic countenance of the latter was clouded with care.
He shook hands dismally with my aunt, nodded to me, and flung himself
down on a sofa.

"The worst has happened," Caerlaverock boomed solemnly. "Cargill has
been incredibly and infamously silly." He tossed me an evening paper.

One glance convinced me that the Convention of Young Liberals had had a
waking-up. Cargill had addressed them on what he called the true view
of citizenship. He had dismissed manhood suffrage as an obsolete
folly. The franchise, he maintained, should be narrowed and given only
to citizens, and his definiti