'There is one great favour which I think you will be able to do me without any trouble to yourself, and that is to let my wife come to your room to see me _between_ her lunch and the meeting of the House. The greatest nuisance about being out is that I shall have to go down in the mornings to get my place, and to sit in the library all day.... 'Yours ever, 'Chs. W. D' When the first trial of the divorce case was over (almost before Mr. Gladstone's Government had fairly assumed office), in the period during which Sir Charles designedly absented himself from the House of Commons, 'Chamberlain asked me to act on the Committee to revise my Local Government Bill, and to put it into a form for introduction to the House; and I attended at the Local Government Board throughout the spring at meetings at which Chamberlain, if present, presided.... It is a curious fact that I often presided over this Cabinet Committee, though not a member of the Government.' During the month of February, while the Press campaign against him was ripening, Sir Charles had little freedom of mind for politics. Yet this was the moment when Mr. Chamberlain's action, decisive for the immediate fate of a great question, had to be determined. Sir Charles had been a conducting medium between Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Chamberlain. He was so no longer. "I wonder," wrote Chamberlain, years after, on reading Dilke's Memoir, "what passed in that most intricate and Jesuitical mind in the months between June and December, 1885." Perhaps the breach that came was unavoidable. But at all events the one man who might have prevented it was at the critical moment hopelessly involved in the endeavour to combat the scandal that assailed him. [Footnote: There is a letter of this date to Mr. John Morley: '76, Sloane Street, S.W., '_February 2nd_. 'My Dear Morley, 'As I must not yet congratulate you on becoming at a bound Privy Councillor and member of the Cabinet, let me in the meantime congratulate you on your election as a V.P. of the Chelsea Liberal Association. But seriously, there can be no doubt that you now have sealed the great position which you had already won. My _one_ hope is that you will work;--my hope, not for your own sake, but for the sake of Radical principles--as completely with Chamberlain as I did. It is the only way to stand against the overwhelming numbers of the Whig peers. I fear Mr. Gladstone will find his new lot of Whig peers just as troublesome as the old. 'As long as I am out and _my friends_ are in, I shall sit, not in my old place below the gangway, but behind, and do anything and everything that I can do to help. 'Yours ever, 'Chs. W. D. 'I _hope_ it is true that Stansfeld is back?' It was not till March 3rd, 1886, that