Repeating those words, he mechanically locked up his papers, and pressed his hand to his heart for an instant, as if a spasm had shot through it.
“So—I must shun all emotion!” said he, shaking his head gently.
In five minutes more Audley Egerton was in the streets, his mien erect, and his step firm as ever.
“That man is made of bronze,” said a leader of the Opposition to a friend as they rode past the minister. “What would I not give for his nerves!”
BOOK NINTH.
INITIAL CHAPTER.
ON PUBLIC LIFE.
Now that I am fairly in the heart of my story, these preliminary chapters must shrink into comparatively small dimensions, and not encroach upon the space required by the various personages whose acquaintance I have picked up here and there, and who are now all crowding upon me like poor relations to whom one has unadvisedly given a general invitation, and who descend upon one simultaneously about Christmas time. Where they are to be stowed, and what is to become of them all, Heaven knows; in the mean while, the reader will have already observed that the Caxton Family themselves are turned out of their own rooms, sent a packing, in order to make way for the new comers.