But Margaret Massarene, although she would not allow it, did, in her own mind, think that her man was soaring too high in his aspirations. To look up where he meant to rise to, made her feel giddy and afraid. “They’ll never give it to ye, William,” his wife ventured timidly to say one day, by “it” meaning his peerage. He smiled grimly. “Why not? ’Cos I ain’t a Radical turncoat? ’Cause I ain’t a Birmingham sweater? ’Cause I ain’t a Hebrew broker? They’ll give it me, old woman, or I’ll know the reason why. You’ll be ‘my Lady,’ if you live.” He devoutly hoped she would not live; but if she did live, she should be Lady Cottesdale. He had decided on his title, which he intended to take from a little property that he had purchased in the Midlands, and he had already ordered a dinner-service of gold plate, with a coronet on all its pieces, which was to be a work of art, and would take some years to finish. Before it would be ready for him he would be ready for it, with his baron’s crown to put on everything, from the great gates to the foot-baths. Any man who is very rich can become an English peer if he has kept clear of scandals and dabbled a little in public life. And who was richer than he? Nobody this side the herring-pond. The Conservatives were in office. The Flying Boats of the fair, to which he had once irreverently compared the two political parties, had made their see-sawing journey, and the one was temporarily up and the other temporarily down. The owner of Vale Royal was beginning to make them feel that they would lose him if they did not please him, and that they could not afford to lose him. He had a forty-horse power of making himself dangerous and disagreeable. “A very dreadful person,” said Lord Greatrex always, when in the bosom of his family; but he knew that it was precisely this kind of person who must be conciliated and retained by a Prime Minister on the eve of the twentieth century. A chief of government has only a certain quantity of good things in his gift, and he does not waste them on those who, being neglected, will not avenge themselves. William Massarene worried the heads of his party extremely; they were well aware that if he did not get what he wanted from them, he would rat and make terms with the enemy. Governments are accustomed to John Snob, whom nothing will pacify, except to become Lord Vere de Vere; but John Snob is never beloved by them.