I have got your letter this moment.  Of course we must meet.  I hunt on Tuesday, and go down by the early train; but I will come to town on Wednesday.  We shall require to be private, and I will therefore be at your rooms at one o’clock on that day.—­C.

Phineas at once perceived that the note was a hostile note, written in an angry spirit,—­written to one whom the writer did not at the moment acknowledge to be his friend.  This was certainly the case, whatever Lord Chiltern may have said to his sister as to his friendship for Phineas.  Phineas crushed the note into his pocket, and of course determined that he would be in his rooms at the hour named.

The debate was opened by a speech from Mr. Mildmay, in which that gentleman at great length and with much perspicuity explained his notion of that measure of Parliamentary Reform which he thought to be necessary.  He was listened to with the greatest attention to the close,—­and perhaps, at the end of his speech, with more attention than usual, as there had gone abroad a rumour that the Prime Minister intended to declare that this would be the last effort of his life in that course.  But, if he ever intended to utter such a pledge, his heart misgave him when the time came for uttering it.  He merely said that as the management of the bill in committee would be an affair of much labour, and probably spread over many nights, he would be assisted in his work by his colleagues, and especially by his right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs.  It was then understood that Mr. Gresham would take the lead should the bill go into committee;—­but it was understood also that no resignation of leadership had been made by Mr. Mildmay.

The measure now proposed to the House was very much the same as that which had been brought forward in the last session.  The existing theory of British representation was not to be changed, but the actual practice was to be brought nearer to the ideal theory.  The ideas of manhood suffrage, and of electoral districts, were to be as for ever removed from the bulwarks of the British Constitution.  There were to be counties with agricultural constituencies, purposely arranged to be purely agricultural, whenever the nature of the counties would admit of its being so.  No artificer at Reform, let him be Conservative or Liberal, can make Middlesex or Lancashire agricultural; but Wiltshire and Suffolk were to be preserved inviolable to the plough,—­and the apples of Devonshire were still to have their sway.  Every town in the three kingdoms with a certain population was to have two members.  But here there was much room for cavil,—­as all men knew would be the case.  Who shall say what is a town, or where shall be its limits?  Bits of counties might be borrowed, so as to lessen the Conservatism of the county without endangering the Liberalism of the borough.  And then there were the boroughs with one member,—­and