Lord John sat down presently, thrusting his head at once into a packet of papers, which the gloom hardly permitted him to read. A clerk at the table mumbled something; and a gentleman on the other side of the House rose and began to speak. He had not uttered many sentences, however, before the members on the Reform benches awoke, not only to life, but to fury. Stentorian shouts of “Divide! Divide!” rendered the speaker inaudible; and after looking towards the door of the House more than once he sat down, and the House went to a division. In a few minutes it was known that the Bill had been read a third time, by 113 to 58. But the foreign gentleman would have made a great mistake had he gone away, supposing that Lord John’s few placid words—and not those spiteful shouts—represented the feelings of the House. In truth the fiercest passions were at work under the surface. Among the fifty-eight who shrugged their shoulders and accepted the verdict in gloomy silence were some primed with the fiercest invective; and others, tongue-tied men, who nevertheless honestly believed that Lord John Russell was a republican, and Althorp a fool; who were certain that the Whigs wittingly or unwittingly were working the destruction of the country, were dragging her from the pride of place to which a nicely-balanced Constitution had raised her, and laying her choicest traditions at the feet of the rabble. Men who believed such things, and saw the deed done before their eyes, might accept their doom in silence—even as the King of old went silently to the Banquet Hall hard by—but not with joy or easy hearts! Vaughan, therefore, was not the only one who walked into the lobby that evening, brooding darkly on his revenge. Yet, even he behaved himself as men, so bred, so trained do behave themselves. He held his peace. And no one dreamed, not even Orator Hunt, who sat not far from him under the shadow of his White Hat, that this well-conducted young gentleman was revolving thoughts of the Social Order, and of the Party System, and of most things which the Church Catechism commends, beside which that terrible Radical’s own opinions were mere Tory prejudices. The fickleness of women! The treachery of men! Oh, Aetna bury them! Oh, Ocean overwhelm them! Let all cease together and be no more! But give me sweet, oh, sweet, oh, sweet Revenge! XXV AT STAPYLTON