Andley Egerton for his nominee. But the ex-minister's haughty soul
shrunk from this contrast to his past position. And to fight against the
popular measure, as member of one of the seats most denounced by the
people,--he felt it was a post in the grand army of parties below his
dignity to occupy, and foreign to his peculiar mind, which required the
sense of consequence and station. And if, in a few months, those seats
were swept away--were annihilated from the rolls of parliament--where was
he? Moreover, Egerton, emancipated from the trammels that had bound his
will while his party was in office, desired, in the turn of events, to be
nominee of no man,--desired to stand at least freely and singly on the
ground of his own services, be guided by his own penetration; no law for
action but his strong sense and his stout English heart. Therefore he
had declined all offers from those who could still bestow seats in
parliament. Seats that he could purchase with hard gold were yet open to
him. And the L5,000 he had borrowed from Levy were yet untouched.

To this lone public man, public life, as we have seen, was the all in
all. But now more than ever it was vital to his very wants. Around him
yawned ruin. He knew that it was in Levy's power at any moment to
foreclose on his mortgaged lands; to pour in the bonds and the bills
which lay within those rosewood receptacles that lined the fatal lair of
the sleek usurer; to seize on the very house in which now moved all the
pomp of a retinue that vied with the valetaille of dukes; to advertise
for public auction, under execution, "the costly effects of the Right
Hon. Audley Egerton." But, consummate in his knowledge of the world,
Egerton felt assured that Levy would not adopt these measures against him
while he could still tower in the van of political war,--while he could
still see before him the full chance of restoration to power, perhaps to
power still higher than before, perhaps to power the highest of all
beneath the throne. That Levy, whose hate he divined, though he did not