'Left for the last time the House of Commons, where I have attained some distinction. It is curious that only a week ago Chamberlain and I had agreed, at his wish and suggestion, that I should be the future leader, as being more popular in the House, though less in the country, than he was, and that only three days ago Mr. Gladstone had expressed the same wish. Such a charge, even if disproved, which is not easy against perjured evidence picked up with care, is fatal to supreme usefulness in politics. In the case of a public man a charge is always believed by many, even though disproved, and I should be weighted by it through life. I prefer, therefore, at once to contemplate leaving public life.' Upon the first sentence of this he added in a marginal note, written after his marriage with Mrs. Mark Pattison, and after he had, in spite of that first decision, returned to the House of Commons: 'Chamberlain overpersuaded Emilia, and, through her, me, but he was wrong.' Of honourable ambition Sir Charles Dilke had as much as any man. Yet in the innermost record of these days--in those letters which, not yet daring to despatch them, he wrote to his future wife--there is not a hint of his personal loss, not a word of the career that he saw broken. These things had no place in the rush of feeling which overwhelmed him, and left him for the moment unable to trust his own judgment or assert his own will. Through the months of Mrs. Pattison's absence in India one note had been constant in his letters--the reiterated anticipation of what he hoped to bring her. Up to the middle of July his letters, apart from the news of his daily life, are filled with joyful forecast, not of his own happiness, but of his and hers together--of his happiness in seeing her happy. When the stroke fell, the note, even though it changed, was the same in essence: 'I feel this may kill you--and it will kill me either if it kills you or if you don't believe me.' That was written down within an hour after he had the news. Never afterwards did he consider the possibility of her failing him. The next day he wrote: 'Taplow Court, Taplow, _July 20th._ 'The only thing I can do in future is to devote myself entirely to _you_ and helping in your work. To that the remainder of my life must be dedicated. I fancy you will have the courage to believe me whatever is by madness and malevolence brought against me....' He wrote again: 'The less you turn from me, and the more you are true--and of course you will be all true ... --the more misery and not the less is it to me to bring these horrors on you. This thing is not true, but none the less do I bring these horrors on you.'