reputation would have secured him at once a seat in Parliament; but the
ancient nurseries of statesmen are gone, and their place is not supplied.

He had been invited, however, to stand for more than one large and
populous borough, with very fair prospects of success; and, whatever the
expense, Mr. King had offered to defray it. But Graham would not have
incurred the latter obligation; and when he learned the pledges which his
supporters would have exacted, he would not have stood if success had
been certain and the cost nothing. "I cannot," he said to his friends,
"go into the consideration of what is best for the country with my
thoughts manacled; and I cannot be both representative and slave of the
greatest ignorance of the greatest number. I bide my time, and meanwhile
I prefer to write as I please, rather than vote as I don't please."

Three years went by, passed chiefly in England, partly in travel; and at
the age of thirty, Graham Vane was still one of those of whom admirers
say, "He will be a great man some day;" and detractors reply, "Some day
seems a long way off."

The same fastidiousness which had operated against that entrance into
Parliament, to which his ambition not the less steadily adapted itself,
had kept him free from the perils of wedlock. In his heart he yearned
for love and domestic life, but he had hitherto met with no one who
realized the ideal he had formed. With his person, his accomplishments,
his connections, and his repute, he might have made many an advantageous
marriage. But somehow or other the charm vanished from a fair face, if
the shadow of a money-bag fell on it; on the other hand, his ambition
occupied so large a share in his thoughts that he would have fled in time
from the temptation of a marriage that would have overweighted him beyond
the chance of rising. Added to all, he desired in a wife an intellect