“A knighthood? That’s the thing City men have, isn’t it, when they make money by selling patent mousetraps, or happen to be Lord Mayors, or something like that? Unfortunately, my husband would not qualify for a knighthood. He is not a small pedler. His—what shall I say?”
“Operations are more extensive?”
“Precisely. He does things on a fine scale. For instance, he has, as I said, at this very moment twelve votes at his command, which might make a very considerable difference on a division. You see, conscience is a great thing with him. He could never neglect it. But if he was in the Upper House....”
The great Minister could comfortably have shuddered. He was a peer himself, and was jealous for his caste. But, as it was, he repressed this piece of outward emotion, and contented himself with saying “No,” quietly, softly, and with entire decision. Then, with a swirl of brilliant talk there was no arresting, he deliberately changed the conversation. Mrs. Shelf submitted. She had another card still to play. And until she picked up the ladies with her glance, and led them away up-stairs, they two spoke of oranges from many points of view. They agreed that the large tangerines of Majorca were the only oranges fit to eat in England, and discussed the various means of getting them imported viâ Marseilles without suffering them to lose more than a fraction of their flavor.
The Minister, fatuous man, thought that she had given in to him, and chuckled inwardly at his victory, and when the ladies had gone, he turned to his next-door neighbor and talked on the ethics of Irish cock shooting with a light and easy mind. But for the next move in the drawing-room he was frankly unprepared. He had come to Park Lane on the clear understanding that a tête-à-tête was to be contrived for him with the Ambassador; for it is in this way that the great treaties which dally with the fate of nations receive their birth-push. I do not say that the matter of peace or war depended upon that interview; but sufficient hung on it to make the great Minister very anxious, because he had been deputed by his colleagues in the Cabinet to bring this thing about, and had solemnly undertaken the charge.
And, lo! the chance of this momentous minute’s chat was to be withheld. Mrs. Shelf, calm, clever, magnificent, came to his elbow the moment he entered the drawing-room, and stayed there. He was frosty, he was inattentive, he was almost rude, but he could not shake her off. She was cool, insistent, fluent. She made him sit on a sofa by her side, and laughed almost openly at the attempts he made to shake loose from his bondage.
At last he broke off in the middle of an aimless sentence, and looked her between the eyes. She returned the glance most squarely. There was a pause between them, and then—
“By the way, baronetcy?” he murmured.
It was nothing on earth to do with what they had been speaking about the minute previously, but the sentence did not require a footnote to explain it further.