CHAPTER X

Violet Effingham

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. Monk were the best friends in the world, swearing by each other in their own house, and supported in the other by as gallant a phalanx of Whig peers as ever were got together to fight against the instincts of their own order in compliance 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 abominable, and the cause of the Rights of Women generally was odious 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 Privy Seal.  The Earl himself was not an ambitious man, and, but for his daughter, would have severed himself altogether from political life before this time.  He was an unhappy man;—­being an obstinate man, and having in his obstinacy 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 obedience to her requirements, he came yearly up to London, and, perhaps in compliance with her persuasion, had taken some part in the debates of the House of Lords.  It is easy for a peer to be a statesman, if the trouble of the life be not too much for him.  Lord Brentford was now a statesman, if a seat in the Cabinet be proof of statesmanship.

At this time, in May, there was staying with Lady Laura in Portman Square a very dear friend of hers, by name Violet Effingham.  Violet Effingham was an orphan, an heiress, and a beauty; with a terrible aunt, one Lady Baldock, who was supposed to be the dragon who had Violet, as a captive maiden, in charge.  But as Miss Effingham was of age, and was mistress of her own fortune, Lady Baldock was, in truth, not omnipotent as a dragon should be.  The dragon, at any rate, was not now staying in Portman Square, and the captivity of the maiden was therefore not severe at the present moment.  Violet Effingham was very pretty, but could hardly be said to be beautiful.  She was small, with light crispy hair, which seemed to be ever on the flutter round her brows, and which yet was never a hair astray.  She had sweet, soft grey eyes, which never looked at you long, hardly for