‘Besides,’ added the duke, after a moment’s pause, and inferring, from the silence of his son, that he was making an impression, ‘suppose Hungerford is not in the same humour this time three years which he is in now. Probably he may be; possibly he may not. Men do not like to be baulked when they think they are doing a very kind and generous and magnanimous thing. Hungerford is not a warming-pan; we must remember that; he never was originally, and if he had been, he has been member for the county too long to be so considered now. I should be placed in a most painful position, if, this time three years, I had to withdraw my support from Hungerford, in order to secure your return.’ ‘There would be no necessity, under any circumstances, for that, my dear father,’ said Lord Montacute, looking up, and speaking in a voice which, though somewhat low, was of that organ that at once arrests attention; a voice that comes alike from the brain and from the heart, and seems made to convey both profound thought and deep emotion. There is no index of character so sure as the voice. There are tones, tones brilliant and gushing, which impart a quick and pathetic sensibility: there are others that, deep and yet calm, seem the just interpreters of a serene and exalted intellect. But the rarest and the most precious of all voices is that which combines passion and repose; and whose rich and restrained tones exercise, perhaps, on the human frame a stronger spell than even the fascination of the eye, or that bewitching influence of the hand, which is the privilege of the higher races of Asia. ‘There would be no necessity, under any circumstances, for that, my dear father,’ said Lord Montacute, ‘for, to be frank, I believe I should feel as little disposed to enter Parliament three years hence as now.’ The duke looked still more surprised. ‘Mr. Fox was not of age when he took his seat,’ said his Grace. ‘You know how old Mr. Pitt was when he was a minister. Sir Robert, too, was in harness very early. I have always heard the good judges say, Lord Esk-dale, for example, that a man might speak in Parliament too soon, but it was impossible to go in too soon.’ ‘If he wished to succeed in that assembly,’ replied Lord Montacute, ‘I can easily believe it. In all things an early initiation must be of advantage. But I have not that wish.’ ‘I don’t like to see a man take his seat in the House of Lords who has not been in the House of Commons. He seems to me always, in a manner, unfledged.’ ‘It will be a long time, I hope, my dear father, before I take my seat in the House of Lords,’ said Lord Montacute, ‘if, indeed, I ever do.’ ‘In the course of nature ‘tis a certainty.’ ‘Suppose the Duke’s plan for perpetuating an aristocracy do not succeed,’ said Lord Montacute, ‘and our house ceases to exist?’