something to give up. We shall not, I suppose, always be out of office,
and they get preferred more easily whose promotion contributes to
patronage, even while they claim its exercise."

The ministry were in a minority on the Irish Church on April 2, the
day on which Mr. Ferrars arrived in town. They did not resign, but
the attack was to be repeated in another form on the 6th. During the
terrible interval Mr. Ferrars made distracted visits to Downing Street,
saw secretaries of state, who sympathised with him not withstanding
their own chagrin, and was closeted daily and hourly with
under-secretaries, parliamentary and permanent, who really alike wished
to serve him. But there was nothing to be had. He was almost meditating
taking Sierra Leone, or the Gold Coast, when the resignation of Sir
Robert Peel was announced. At the last moment, there being, of course,
no vacancy in the Foreign Office, or the Treasury, he obtained from
Barron an appointment for Endymion, and so, after having left Hurstley
five months before to become Governor-General of India, this man, "who
had claims," returned to his mortified home with a clerkship for his son
in a second-rate government office.



CHAPTER XIX

Disappointment and distress, it might be said despair, seemed fast
settling again over the devoted roof of Hurstley, after a three years'
truce of tranquillity. Even the crushing termination of her worldly
hopes was forgotten for the moment by Mrs. Ferrars in her anguish at the
prospect of separation from Endymion. Such a catastrophe she had never
for a moment contemplated. True it was she had been delighted with