“Can you ask the question? Have you not seen the evening papers, read the announcement on my door, seen the troops of inquirers in the streets?”
“Yes,” sighed he, wearily, “I have heard and seen all you say; and yet I bethought me of a remark I once heard from the Duke of Orleans: 'Monsieur Upton is a most active minister when his health permits; and when it does not, he is the most mischievous intriguant in Europe.'”
“He was always straining at an antithesis; he fancied he could talk like St. Simon, and it really spoiled a very pleasant converser.”
“And so you have been very ill?” said Glencore, slowly, and as though he had not heeded the last remark; “so have I also!”
“You seem to me too feeble to be about, Glencore,” said Upton, kindly.
“I am so, if it were of any consequence,—I mean, if my life could interest or benefit any one. My head, however, will bear solitude no longer; I must have some one to talk to. I mean to travel; I will leave this in a day or so.”
“Come along with me, then; my plan is to make for Brussels, but it must not be spoken of, as I want to watch events there before I remove farther from England.”
“So it is all true, then,—you have resigned?” said Glencore.
“Perfectly true.”
“What a strange step to take! I remember, more than twenty years ago, your telling me that you'd rather be Foreign Secretary of England than the monarch of any third-rate Continental kingdom.”