“No, not yet; I suppose she will see me as soon as any one.”
“I am told she is utterly overwhelmed.”
“She was devoted to him; it was the happiest union I ever knew; but Lady Roehampton is not the woman to be utterly overwhelmed. She has too imperial a spirit for that.”
“It is a great misfortune,” said the prime minister. “We have not been lucky since we took the reins.”
“Well, there is no use in deploring. There is nobody else to take the reins, so you may defy misfortunes. The question now is, what are you going to do?”
“Well, there seems to me only one thing to do. We must put Rawchester there.”
“Rawchester!” exclaimed Lady Montfort, “what, ‘Niminy-Piminy’?”
“Well, he is conciliatory,” said the premier, “and if you are not very clever, you should be conciliatory.”
“He never knows his own mind for a week together.”
“We will take care of his mind,” said the prime minister, “but he has travelled a good deal, and knows the public men.”