It is somewhat more than a year and a half since
Kenelm Chillingly left England, and the scene now
is in London, during that earlier and more sociable
season which precedes the Easter holidays,—season
in which the charm of intellectual companionship is
not yet withered away in the heated atmosphere of
crowded rooms,—season in which parties
are small, and conversation extends beyond the interchange
of commonplace with one’s next neighbour at
a dinner-table,—season in which you have
a fair chance of finding your warmest friends not
absorbed by the superior claims of their chilliest
acquaintances.
There was what is called a conversazione at
the house of one of those Whig noblemen who yet retain
the graceful art of bringing agreeable people together,
and collecting round them the true aristocracy, which
combines letters and art and science with hereditary
rank and political distinction,—that art
which was the happy secret of the Lansdownes and Hollands
of the last generation. Lord Beaumanoir was himself
a genial, well-read man, a good judge of art, and
a pleasant talker. He had a charming wife, devoted
to him and to her children, but with enough love of
general approbation to make herself as popular in
the fashionable world as if she sought in its gayeties
a refuge from the dulness of domestic life.
Amongst the guests at the Beaumanoirs, this evening
were two men, seated apart in a small room, and conversing
familiarly. The one might be about fifty-four;
he was tall, strongly built, but not corpulent, somewhat
bald, with black eyebrows, dark eyes, bright and keen,
mobile lips round which there played a shrewd and sometimes
sarcastic smile.
This gentleman, the Right Hon. Gerard Danvers, was
a very influential member of Parliament. He
had, when young for English public life, attained
to high office; but—partly from a great
distaste to the drudgery of administration; partly
from a pride of temperament, which unfitted him for
the subordination that a Cabinet owes to its chief;
partly, also, from a not uncommon kind of epicurean
philosophy, at once joyous and cynical, which sought
the pleasures of life and held very cheap its honours—he
had obstinately declined to re-enter office, and only
spoke on rare occasions. On such occasions he
carried great weight, and, by the brief expression
of his opinions, commanded more votes than many an
orator infinitely more eloquent. Despite his
want of ambition, he was fond of power in his own
way,—power over the people who had
power; and, in the love of political intrigue, he
found an amusement for an intellect very subtle and
very active. At this moment he was bent on a
new combination among the leaders of different sections
in the same party, by which certain veterans were
to retire, and certain younger men to be admitted
into the Administration. It was an amiable feature
