Presently Grancey Lespel rounded a projection of the house where the drawing-room stood out: “The maddest folly ever talked!” he delivered himself in wrath. “The Whigs dead? You may as well say I’m dead.”
It was Beauchamp answering: “Politically, you’re dead, if you call yourself a Whig. You couldn’t be a live one, for the party’s in pieces, blown to the winds. The country was once a chess-board for Whig and Tory: but that game’s at an end. There’s no doubt on earth that the Whigs are dead.”
“But if there’s no doubt about it, how is it I have a doubt about it?”
“You know you’re a Tory. You tried to get that man Dollikins from me in the Tory interest.”
“I mean to keep him out of Radical clutches. Now that’s the truth.”
They came up to the group by the open window, still conversing hotly, indifferent to listeners.
“You won’t keep him from me; I have him,” said Beauchamp.
“You delude yourself; I have his promise, his pledged word,” said Grancey Lespel.
“The man himself told you his opinion of renegade Whigs.”
“Renegade!”