'The best authority; one of themselves.'

'Who? who?'

'Paul Evelyn; I met him as I passed Brookes', and he told me that Lord
Grey had resigned, and the King had accepted his resignation.'

But Mr. Rigby, who, though very fond of news, and much interested in the
present, was extremely jealous of any one giving him information, was
sceptical. He declared that Paul Evelyn was always wrong; that it was
morally impossible that Paul Evelyn ever could be right; that he knew,
from the highest authority, that Lord Grey had been twice yesterday with
the King; that on the last visit nothing was settled; that if he had been
at the palace again to-day, he could not have been there before twelve
o'clock; that it was only now a quarter to one; that Lord Grey would have
called his colleagues together on his return; that at least an hour must
have elapsed before anything could possibly have transpired. Then he
compared and criticised the dates of every rumoured incident of the last
twenty-four hours, and nobody was stronger in dates than Mr. Rigby;
counted even the number of stairs which the minister had to ascend and
descend in his visit to the palace, and the time their mountings and
dismountings must have consumed, detail was Mr. Rigby's forte; and
finally, what with his dates, his private information, his knowledge of
palace localities, his contempt for Paul Evelyn, and his confidence in
himself, he succeeded in persuading his downcast and disheartened friends
that their comfortable intelligence had not the slightest foundation.

They all left the room together; they were in the hall; the gentlemen who
brought the news looked somewhat depressed, but Mr. Rigby gay, even amid
the prostration of his party, from the consciousness that he had most