“At your peril, sir!” said Lady Eleanor, with a look that at once seemed to transfix him; and the old man, muttering his adieu, hobbled from the room, while Lady Eleanor leaned back in her chair, overcome by the conflict of her emotions. “Is he gone?” said Lady Eleanor, faintly, as her daughter entered. “Yes, Mamma; but are you ill? You look dreadfully pale and agitated.” “Wearied--fatigued, my dear, nothing more. Tell Captain Forester I must release him from his engagement to us to-day; I cannot come to dinner.” And, so saying, she covered her eyes with her hand, and seemed lost in deep thought. CHAPTER XIV. “THE MECHANISM OP CORRUPTION” “Well, Heffernan,” said Lord Castlereagh, as they sat over their wine alone in a small dining-room of the Secretary's Lodge,--“well, even with Hackett, we shall be run close. I don't fancy the thought of another division so nearly matched; our fellows don't see the honor of a Thermopylae.” “Very true, my Lord; and the desertions are numerous, as they always will be when men receive the bounty before they are enlisted.” “Yes; but what would you do? We make a man a Commissioner or a sinecurist for his vote,--he vacates his seat on taking office; and, instead of standing the brunt of another election, coolly says, 'That, differing as he must do from his constituents on an important measure, he restores the trust they had committed into his hands--'” “'He hopes unsullied,'--don't forget that, my Lord.” “Yes,--'he hopes unsullied,--and prefers to retire from the active career of politics, carrying with him the esteem and regard of his former friends, rather than endanger their good opinion by supporting measures to which they are conscientiously opposed.'” “Felicitous conjuncture, that unites patriotism and profit!” exclaimed Heffernan. “Happy man, that can draw tears from the Mob, and two thousand a year from the Treasury!” “And yet I see no remedy for it,” sighed the Secretary. “There is one, notwithstanding; but it demands considerable address and skill. You have always been too solicitous about the estimation of the men you bought were held in,--always thinking of what would be said and thought of them. You pushed the system so far that the fellows themselves caught up the delusion, and began to fancy they had characters to lose. All this was wrong,--radically, thoroughly wrong. When the butcher smears a red streak round a lamb's neck,--we call it 'raddling' in Ireland, my Lord,--any child knows he 's destined for the knife; now, when you 'raddled' your flock, you wanted the world to believe you were going to make pets of them, and you said as much, and so often that the beasts themselves believed it, and began cutting their gambols accordingly. Why not have paraded them openly to the shambles? It was their bleating you wanted, and nothing else.” “You forget, Heffernan, how many men would have refused our offers if we had not made a show, at least, of respect for their scruples.”