It was now the middle of May, and a month had elapsed since the terrible difficulty about the Queen’s Government had been solved. A month had elapsed, and things had shaken themselves into their places with more of ease and apparent fitness than men had given them credit for possessing. Mr Mildmay, Mr Gresham, and Mr Monk¹ were the best friends in the world, swearing by each other in their own house, and supported in the other by as gallant² a phalanx of Whig peers as ever were got together to fight against the instincts of their own order in compliance³ with the instincts of those below them. Lady Laura’s father was in the Cabinet, to Lady Laura’s infinite delight. It was her ambition to be brought as near to political action as was possible for a woman without surrendering any of the privileges of feminine inaction. That women should even wish to have votes at parliamentary elections was to her abominable⁴, and the cause of the Rights of Women generally was odious⁵ to her; but, nevertheless, for herself, she delighted in hoping that she too might be useful — in thinking that she too was perhaps, in some degree, politically powerful; and she had received considerable increase to such hopes when her father accepted the Privy⁶ Seal. The Earl himself was not an ambitious man, and, but for his daughter, would have severed⁷ himself altogether from political life before this time. He was an unhappy man — being an obstinate⁸ man, and having in his obstinacy⁹ quarrelled with his only son. In his unhappiness he would have kept himself alone, living in the country, brooding over his wretchedness, were it not for his daughter. On her behalf, and in

分享到：