to the arch fiend, Despair! 'Tis but a girl and a fortune lost,--they
were gallantly fought for, that is some comfort. Now to what is yet left
to me!"

The first letter Lumley opened was from Lord Saxingham. It filled him
with dismay. The question at issue had been formally, but abruptly,
decided in the Cabinet against Vargrave and his manoeuvres. Some hasty
expressions of Lord Saxingham had been instantly caught at by the
premier, and a resignation, rather hinted at than declared, had been
peremptorily accepted. Lord Saxingham and Lumley's adherents in the
Government were to a man dismissed; and at the time Lord Saxingham wrote
the premier was with the king.

"Curse their folly!--the puppets! the dolts!" exclaimed Lumley, crushing
the letter in his hand. "The moment I leave them, they run their heads
against the wall. Curse them! curse myself! curse the man who weaves
ropes with sand! Nothing--nothing left for me but exile or suicide!
Stay, what is this?" His eye fell on the well-known hand writing of the
premier. He tore the envelope, impatient to know the worst. His eyes
sparkled as he proceeded. The letter was most courteous, most
complimentary, most wooing. The minister was a man consummately versed
in the arts that increase, as well as those which purge, a party.
Saxingham and his friends were imbeciles, incapables, mostly men who had
outlived their day. But Lord Vargrave, in the prime of life--versatile,
accomplished, vigorous, bitter, unscrupulous--Vargrave was of another
mould, Vargrave was to be dreaded; and therefore, if possible, to be
retained. His powers of mischief were unquestionably increased by the
universal talk of London that he was about soon to wed so wealthy a lady.
The minister knew his man. In terms of affected regret, he alluded to
the loss the Government would sustain in the services of Lord Saxingham,