“Have you heard what they say?” said Endymion anxiously to Lady Montfort.
“Yes, I heard; but do not look so grave.”
“Do I look grave?”
“As if it were the last day.”
“I fear it is.”
“I am not so sure. I doubt whether Sir Robert thinks it ripe enough; and after all, we are not in a minority. I do not see why we should have resigned. I wish I could see Lord Roehampton.”
Affairs did not proceed so rapidly as the triumphant Zenobia expected. They were out, no question about that; but it was not so certain who was in. A day passed and another day, and even Zenobia, who knew everything before anybody, remained in the dark. The suspense became protracted and even more mysterious. Almost a week had elapsed; noble lords and right honourable gentlemen were calling on Sir Robert every morning, according to the newspapers, but no one could hear from any authority of any appointments being really made. At last, there was a whisper very late one night at Crockford’s, which was always better informed on these matters than the political clubs, and people looked amazed, and stared incredulously in each other’s face. But it was true; there was a hitch, and in four-and-twenty hours the cause of the hitch was known. It seemed that the ministry really had resigned, but Berengaria, Countess of Montfort, had not followed their example.
What a dangerous woman! even wicked! Zenobia was for sending her to the Tower at once. “It was clearly impossible,” she declared, “for Sir Robert to carry on affairs with such a Duchesse de Longueville always at the ear of our young Queen, under the pretence forsooth of being the friend of Her Majesty’s youth.”
This was the famous Bed-Chamber Plot, in which the Conservative leaders, as is now generally admitted, were decidedly in error, and which terminated in the return of the Whigs to office.
“But we must reconstruct,” said Lady Montfort to the prime minister. “Sidney Wilton must be Secretary of State. And you,” she said to Endymion, when she communicated to him the successful result of her interference, “you will go with him. It is a great thing at your age to be private secretary to a Secretary of State.”