"No man more ambitious; and if by power you mean office, it has grown the
habit of my life, and I shall not know what to do without it."

"And how, then, has what seems to me so obvious never occurred to you?"

"Because you are young, and therefore I forgive you; but not the gossips
who could wonder why Audley Egerton refused to betray the friends of his
whole career, and to profit by the treason."

"But one should love one's country before a party."

"No doubt of that; and the first interest of a country is the honour of
its public men."

"But men may leave their party without dishonour!"

"Who doubts that? Do you suppose that if I were an ordinary independent
member of parliament, loaded with no obligations, charged with no trust,
I could hesitate for a moment what course to pursue? Oh, that I were but
the member for ----------! Oh, that I had the full right to be a free
agent! But if a member of a Cabinet, a chief in whom thousands confide,
because he is outvoted in a council of his colleagues, suddenly retires,
and by so doing breaks up the whole party whose confidence he has
enjoyed, whose rewards he has reaped, to whom he owes the very position
which he employs to their ruin,--own that though his choice may be
honest, it is one which requires all the consolations of conscience."

"But you will have those consolations. And," added Randal,
energetically, "the gain to your career will be so immense!"