But the change, slow though genial, like the breaking up of an English frost, came too late to do him much service. With the transfer of the Bill to the House of Lords public interest deserted the Commons. They sat, indeed, through the month of September, to the horror of many a country gentleman, who saw in this the herald of evil days; and they debated after a fashion. But the attendance was sparse, and the thoughts and hopes of all men were in another place. Vaughan saw that for all the reputation he could now make the Dissolution might be come already. And with this, and the emptiness of his heart, from which he could no more put the craving for Mary Vermuyden than he could dismiss her image from the retina of his mind, he was very miserable. The void left by love, indeed, was rendered worse by the void left unsatisfied by ambition. Mary’s haunting face was with him at his rising, went with him to his pillow, her little hand was often on his sleeve, her eyes often pleaded to his. In his lonely rooms he would pace the floor feverishly, savagely, pestering himself with what might have been; kicking the furniture from his path and—and hating her! For the idea of marriage, once closely presented to man or woman, leaves neither unchanged, leaves neither as it found them, however quickly it be put aside. Still it was not possible for one who sprang from the governing classes, and was gifted with political instincts, to witness the excitement which moved the whole country during those weeks of September and the early days of October, without feeling his own blood stirred; without sharing to some extent the exhilaration with which the adventurous view the approach of adventures. What would the peers do? All England was asking that question. At Crockford’s, in the little supper-room, or at the French Hazard table itself, men turned to put it and to hear the answer. At White’s and Boodle’s, in the hall of the Athenæum, as they walked before Apsley House, or under the gas-lamps of Pall Mall, men asked that question again and again. It shared with Pasta and the slow-coming cholera—which none the less was coming—the chit-chat of drawing-rooms; and with the next prize fight or with ridicule of the New Police, the wrangling debates of every tavern and posthouse. Would the peers throw out the Bill? Would they—would those doting old Bishops in particular—dare to thwart the People’s will? Would they dare to withhold the franchise from Birmingham and Manchester, Leeds and Sheffield? On this husbands took one side, wives the other, families quarrelled. What Croker thought, what Lord Grey threatened, what the Duke had let drop, what Brougham had boasted, how Lady Lyndhurst had sneered, or her husband retorted, what the Queen wished—scraps such as these were tossed from mouth to mouth, greedily received, carried far into the country, and eventually, changed beyond recognition, were repeated in awestruck ears, in county ballrooms and at Sessions.