Chapter XL.
“What majority had they last night, my lord?” asked a fair young man in the Carlton, from a stately personage who was sitting at a table near him, occupied with a bottle of Lafitte.
“Fifty-two,” was the reply.
“How did Peel look when he heard it?”
“Oh, he smiled in his usual quiet triumphant way,” said Lord Mannerley.
“Ah! while Peel is sultan there will be no want of ruined villages for our political owls to make their nests in,” remarked the youth.
“Yes, these cursed free-traders flourish on the ruins of the agriculturalists,” said Lord Mannerly savagely.
“And they will be soon howling like jackals in the ruins of the constitution,” added his young companion, with a sigh.
“This Lafitte is capital,” said the ruined landowner.
At this moment a young man approached the table. His bearing was proud, his eyes dark and luminous, his figure stately as a palm-tree. His aquiline nose betrayed his superb organisation. You saw at once that he was of the purest Caucasian race. Yes! his lineage sprung from the families who peopled the noble mountain which received the Divine Ark, and cherished the snowy dove that spread its white wings over the waters, that had swallowed up the inhabitants of a world! As he passed up the noble room, how insignificant in his presence appeared the children of the semi-civilized barbarians, spawned in a northern swamp!