“Treats him as he does you,” Mr. Lespel turned to Ferbrass. “I’ve sent to Dollikins to come to me this morning, if he’s not driving into the town. I’ll have him before Beauchamp sees him. I’ve asked half-a-dozen of these country gentlemen-tradesmen to lunch at my table to-day.”
“Then, sir,” observed Ferbrass, “if they are men to be persuaded, they had better not see me.”
“True; they’re my old supporters, and mightn’t like your Tory face,” Mr. Lespel assented.
Mr. Ferbrass congratulated him on the heartiness of his espousal of the Tory cause.
Mr. Lespel winced a little, and told him not to put his trust in that.
“Turned Tory?” said Palmet.
Mr. Lespel declined to answer.
Palmet said to Mrs. Devereux, “He thinks I’m not worth speaking to upon politics. Now I’ll give him some Beauchamp; I learned lots yesterday.”
“Then let it be in Captain Beauchamp’s manner,” said she softly.
Palmet obeyed her commands with the liveliest exhibition of his peculiar faculty: Cecilia, rejoining them, seemed to hear Nevil himself in his emphatic political mood. “Because the Whigs are defunct! They had no root in the people! Whig is the name of a tribe that was! You have Tory, Liberal, and Radical. There is no place for Whig. He is played out.”