"Surely your lordship has no occasion to complain of it in our days," observed the General. "If one read the speeches of the present men, delivered twenty, fifteen, ten years ago, and mustered them according to their opinions of that date, where should we find them? But I am no politician. It only strikes me that the difference of the two great parties is this, if I may use some military phraseology: the whigs, pushing on, bayonet in hand, are a little in advance of their first position. Their opponents are scattered all over the field, some fighting, some flying, and more surrendering to the enemy. But, to return, this young man, as I have said, seems to me a very rabid tory--I beg your pardon--but a very honest fellow, notwithstanding." "The two things are quite compatible, General," said the Viscount, stiffly. "Oh, perfectly," replied Walter Tracy. "As long as tories remain tories they are very honest people; but when they have turned round two or three times, I do not know what they are." Lord Overton did not like the conversation, and changed it; and the two gentlemen returned to the house. Not many days after he took his departure for London, not quite able to make up his mind whether Rose or Emily, or either, was qualified by wealth, beauty, and grace to become Viscountess Overton. After three days thought in London, he decided that neither was, upon the consideration of the great moral objection that exists to men of rank marrying _Misses_, especially where that most horrible denomination is not corrected by the word honourable before it. If Emily had been even a maid of honour, so that her name might have appeared in the newspapers as the Honourable Miss Tracy, he might have consented; but as it was, he judged decidedly it would be a _mesalliance_, although Mr. Tracy's direct ancestors stood upon the rolls of fame, when his own were herding cattle. He saved himself a very great mortification; for, to be rejected when a man mistakenly thinks he is condescending, is the bitterest draught with which false pride can be medicined.