"I almost wish I had always been a Liberal," he said.
"You always have been," said she; "but now is not the time to say so. Get your seat in the Cabinet, Jack; the Conservative Cabinet is the only opening for a Liberal nowadays. That is where Mr. Spencer makes his mistake. To be a Liberal, however prominent, is nowadays to be perfectly ineffective. You are put in a box and locked up, and the key is put in the key-basket at—well, at a certain country-house. But if you are a Conservative you are let out and given your own key. That is your chance."
"And if they don't give me a seat in the Cabinet?"
"There will be no question about that. They do not like you, but they are afraid of you. The country, on the other hand, likes you a good deal. You have a way with plebeians. I don't know how you manage it. They think you are a practical man, and just now they want practical men, and they intend to get them. But you will have to be very careful about certain things. I wanted to talk to you about those; that was why I sent for you to have lunch with me alone. People were coming, but, in fact, I put them off. We will go to my room."
Lady Ardingly rose, and Jack followed her. He was not quite sure that he would like what was coming, but he was far too sensible to quarrel with her, for he considered her quite the worst person in the world to quarrel with.
"Yes, I am going to speak plainly," she said. "It is, I think, certain that you will be offered the War Office. Now, you have a very clever wife, who will be admirably useful to you; but you have a great friend who is stupider than a mule, with all her soi-disant brilliance. She is au fond a really vulgar woman, and it is vulgar people who make the stupid mistakes. She has already made one, which might have damaged you seriously, but I do not think it will. Of that presently. I was saying that they will probably give you the War Office; but you cannot with any usefulness retain the post for a day if there is a scandal connected with you—a scandal, that is to say, of the wrong sort."
Jack leaned forward in his chair.
"I don't know why I do not resent this, Lady Ardingly," he said, "or why I do not leave the room; but I do neither."
"Because you are a selfish, or at any rate an ambitious man," she said. "Every one who is worth his salt is. Now I will put names to my advice."