The ingratitude and ill-feeling of many of our neighbors has tried me sorely.  It will be a long time before I forget it.  It really seems as though nothing were worth striving for in this very difficult world.”

“Poor Lucy!” said Ferrier to himself, his heart softening, as usual.  “Barrington?  H’m.  That’s odd.”  He had only time for a short reply: 

“My dear Lady Lucy,—­It’s horrid that you are tired and depressed.  I wish I could come and cheer you up.  Politics are a cursed trade.  But never mind, Oliver is safely in, and as soon as the Government is formed, I will come to Tallyn, and we will laugh at these woes.  I can’t write at greater length now, for Broadstone has just summoned me.  You will have seen that he went to Windsor this morning.  Now the agony begins.  Let’s hope it may be decently short.  I am just off for town.

     “Yours ever, John Ferrier.”

Two days passed—­three days—­and still the “agony” lasted.  Lord Broadstone’s house in Portman Square was besieged all day by anxious journalists watching the goings and comings of a Cabinet in the making.  But nothing could be communicated to the newspapers—­nothing, in fact, was settled.  Envoys went backward and forward to Lord Philip in Northamptonshire.  Urgent telegrams invited him to London.  He took no notice of the telegrams; he did not invite the envoys, and when they came he had little or nothing of interest to say to them.  Lord Broadstone, he declared, was fully in possession of his views.  He had nothing more to add.  And, indeed, a short note from him laid by in the new Premier’s pocket-book was, if the truth were known, the fons et origo of all Lord Broadstone’s difficulties.

Meanwhile the more conservative section exerted itself, and by the evening of the third day it seemed to have triumphed.  A rumor spread abroad that Lord Philip had gone too far.  Ferrier emerged from a long colloquy with the Prime Minister, walking briskly across the square with his secretary, smiling at some of the reporters in waiting.  Twenty minutes later, as he stood in the smoking-room of the Reform, surrounded by a few privileged friends, Lankester passed through the room.

“By Jove,” he said to a friend with him, “I believe Ferrier’s done the trick!”

* * * * *

In spite, however, of a contented mind, Ferrier was aware, on reaching his own house, that he was far from well.  There was nothing very much to account for his feeling of illness.  A slight pain across the chest, a slight feeling of faintness, when he came to count up his symptoms; nothing else appeared.  It was a glorious summer evening.  He determined to go back to Chide, who now always returned to Lytchett by an evening train, after a working-day in town.  Accordingly, the new Chancellor of the Exchequer and Leader of the House dined lightly, and went off to St. Pancras, leaving a note for the Prime Minister to say where he was to be found, and promising to come to town again the following afternoon.