etc.; he rejoiced that Lord Vargrave's absence from London had prevented
his being prematurely mixed up, by false scruples of honour, in
secessions which his judgment must condemn. He treated of the question
in dispute with the most delicate address,--confessed the reasonableness
of Lord Vargrave's former opposition to it; but contended that it was
now, if not wise, inevitable. He said nothing of the _justice_ of the
measure he proposed to adopt, but much on the _expediency_. He concluded
by offering to Vargrave, in the most cordial and flattering terms, the
very seat in the Cabinet which Lord Saxingham had vacated, with an
apology for its inadequacy to his lordship's merits, and a distinct and
definite promise of the refusal of the gorgeous viceroyalty of India,
which would be vacant next year by the return of the present
governor-general.

Unprincipled as Vargrave was, it is not, perhaps, judging him too mildly
to say that, had he succeeded in obtaining Evelyn's hand and fortune, he
would have shrunk from the baseness he now meditated. To step coldly
into the very post of which he, and he alone, had been the cause of
depriving his earliest patron and nearest relative; to profit by the
betrayal of his own party; to damn himself eternally in the eyes of his
ancient friends; to pass down the stream of history as a mercenary
apostate,--from all this Vargrave must have shrunk, had he seen one spot
of honest ground on which to maintain his footing. But now the waters of
the abyss were closing over his head; he would have caught at a straw;
how much more consent to be picked up by the vessel of an enemy! All
objection, all scruple, vanished at once. And the "barbaric gold" "of
Ormus and of Ind" glittered before the greedy eyes of the penniless
adventurer! Not a day was now to be lost. How fortunate that a written
proposition, from which it was impossible to recede, had been made to him
before the failure of his matrimonial projects had become known! Too