“No, my Lord. I've seen Meek; they're safe for the present. A coalition has been formed with O'Morgan and his party, which secures a working majority of forty-five or fifty.”
“This is certain, Linton; may I rely upon it?”
“You may, my Lord, with confidence.”
“Then I suppose the moment has come when my adhesion would be most well-timed. It's a grave question, Tom; everything depends on it. If I join them and they go out—”
“Why, your Lordship goes out too, without ever having the satisfaction of being 'in.'”
“Not if they gave me the mission to Florence, Tom. They never remove the smaller legations in any change of parties.”
“But you could not help resigning, my Lord; you should follow your friends,” said Linton, with an assumed air of high principle.
“Not a bit of it; I 'd hold on. I see no reason whatever for such a course. I have made a rough draft of a letter which Hindley should show to Peel. See here, this is the important passage. I presuppose that I had already given Hindley my resignation to hand in to Aberdeen, but that yielding to his arguments, who refuses to deliver it, I have reconsidered the matter. Now, listen: 'You say that my functions are not of a nature to admit any line of partisanship, and that a man of honorable views can serve his country under a Whig or Tory administration, irrespective of his own preference for one or the other. I feel this to be true. I know that, in my own official career, I have always forgotten the peculiar politics of my masters; but another question arises,—how shall I be judged by others? for while I confess to you that I entertain for Peel's capacity a respect I have never been able to feel for the Whig leaders, yet family prejudices, connections, a hundred minor circumstances, some purely accidental, threw me among the ranks of that party, and a sense of consistency kept me where very probably unbiassed judgment had never suffered me to remain.'”
“Amazingly good! very well done, indeed!” said Linton, in whose dubious smile younger eyes than Lord Kilgoff's might have read the most insolent expression of contempt; not, indeed, at the hypocrisy, but at the poor attempt to give it color. “There could be no thought of removing a man with such sentiments.”
“I think not, Linton. It would be a gross and flagrant case of official tyranny to do so,—a case for inquiry in the House,—a motion to produce the correspondence—”