He seemed to be quite above the divisions of party. He seemed a sort of Ambassador from the permanent officials and to carry into the House of Commons an atmosphere at once judicial and experienced which no one could resist. When he had first accepted the Wardenship of the Court of Dowry it had been wondered that he should take so secondary a post. Now, after these four years, it was rather wondered why no one had seen till then the possibilities that lay in the position. After that typical and decisive day, Repton, for more than a month, refrained from debate. He was ever in his seat on those two days in each week when it was his business to answer questions: he never let his understrapper appear for him; for one full fortnight he was permanently in attendance, watching the fortunes before a select committee of a certain Bill, for which the public cared nothing but which he knew might change in a very important particular the public fortune--but in general he seemed to be in retirement. He was planning hard. A mixture of Imperial sentiment and personal pride urged him to put Van Diemens on their legs, and all April, all through the Easter Recess, he remained in London working. He worked right on into May; for the first week after Parliament met again he was seen but little; one thing only troubled him, that at long intervals--sometimes as long as ten days, an uneasy twinge behind the ears, the result of that little half-forgotten accident, incommoded him. These twinges came a trifle more frequently as May advanced. After the last of them he had felt a little dazed--no more. And still he worked and worked, holding twenty reins in his hands. Before the end of May the fruit of all this labour began to appear. Camptons were reconstructed, arbitration had been forced upon the Docks combination in the North just in time to prevent a wholesale transference of shipping abroad, and more important than all, perhaps, there had begun to crop up in the papers, here, there, and everywhere, the mention--and the flattering mention--of Van Diemens, and the wealthy were already familiar with the conception of a certain railway in the land which was under the Van Diemens charter. The wealthy, but as yet only the wealthy; it is as fatal to be too early as to be too late, and that brain which knew how to drive and compel, had also known so well how to restrain, that the shares still remained unsaleable with the meaningless quotation of sixteen shillings and a few fluctuating pence still attached to them in the market lists.