Presently the young man would succeed and the old chattels would be swept away to cottage or lumber-room. The old horses would be shot, the old dogs would be hanged, the old servants discharged, perhaps the very trees under which he walked and which he loved would be cut down. The house, the stables, the kennels, all but the cellars would be refurnished; and in the bustle and glitter of the new _régime_, begun in the sunshine, the twilight of his own latter days would be forgotten in a month. _We die and are forgotten, ’tis Heaven’s decree, And thus the lot of others will be the lot of me!_ Sunday by Sunday he had read those lines on the grave of a kinsman, a man whom he had known. He had often repeated them, he could as soon forget them as his prayers. To-day the old memories and the old times, which Lady Lansdowne had made to rise from the dead, gave them a new meaning and a new bitterness. VIII A SAD MISADVENTURE Arthur Vaughan was not a little relieved by the tidings which Isaac White had conveyed to him at Chippenham. The news freed him from a duty which did not appear the less distasteful because it was no longer inevitable. To cast against Sir Robert the vote which he owed to Sir Robert must have exposed him to odium, whatever the matter at stake. But at this election, at which the issue was, aye or no, was the borough to be swept away or not, to vote “aye” was an act from which the least sensitive must have shrunk, and which the most honest must have performed with reluctance. Add the extreme exasperation of public feeling, of which every day and every hour brought to light the most glaring proofs, and he had been fortunate indeed if he had not incurred some general blame as well as the utmost weight of Sir Robert’s displeasure. He was spared all this, and he was thankful. Yet, when he rose on the morning after his arrival at Bristol, his heart was not as light as a feather. On the contrary, as he looked from the window of the White Lion into the bustle of Broad Street, he yawned dolefully; admitting that life, and particularly the prospect before him, of an immediate return to London, was dull. Why go back? Why stay here? Why do anything? The Woolsack? Bah! The Cabinet? Pooh! They were but gaudy baits for the shallow and the hard-hearted. Moreover, they were so distant, so unattainable, that pursuit of them seemed the merest moonshine; more especially on this fine April morning, made for nothing but a coach ride through an enchanted country, by the side of the sweetest face, the brightest eyes, the most ravishing figure, the prettiest bonnet that ever tamed the gruffest of coachmen. Heigh-ho! If it were all to do over again how happy would he be! How happy had he been, and not known it, the previous morning! It was pitiful to think of him in his ignorance, with that day, that blissful day, before him.