“I beg your pardon for coming too early,” said Finn.

“Not a minute too early.  Seven is seven, and it is I who am too late.  But, Lord bless you, you don’t think I’m ashamed of being found in the act of decanting my own wine!  I remember Lord Palmerston saying before some committee about salaries, five or six years ago now, I daresay, that it wouldn’t do for an English Minister to have his hall door opened by a maid-servant.  Now, I’m an English Minister, and I’ve got nobody but a maid-servant to open my hall door, and I’m obliged to look after my own wine.  I wonder whether it’s improper?  I shouldn’t like to be the means of injuring the British Constitution.”

“Perhaps if you resign soon, and if nobody follows your example, grave evil results may be avoided.”

“I sincerely hope so, for I do love the British Constitution; and I love also the respect in which members of the English Cabinet are held.  Now Turnbull, who will be here in a moment, hates it all; but he is a rich man, and has more powdered footmen hanging about his house than ever Lord Palmerston had himself.”

“He is still in business.”

“Oh yes;—­and makes his thirty thousand a year.  Here he is.  How are you, Turnbull?  We were talking about my maid-servant.  I hope she opened the door for you properly.”

“Certainly,—­as far as I perceived,” said Mr. Turnbull, who was better at a speech than a joke.  “A very respectable young woman I should say.”

“There is not one more so in all London,” said Mr. Monk; “but Finn seems to think that I ought to have a man in livery.”

“It is a matter of perfect indifference to me,” said Mr. Turnbull.  “I am one of those who never think of such things.”

“Nor I either,” said Mr. Monk.  Then the laird of Loughlinter was announced, and they all went down to dinner.

Mr. Turnbull was a good-looking robust man about sixty, with long grey hair and a red complexion, with hard eyes, a well-cut nose, and full lips.  He was nearly six feet high, stood quite upright, and always wore a black swallow-tail coat, black trousers, and a black silk waistcoat.  In the House, at least, he was always so dressed, and at dinner tables.  What difference there might be in his costume when at home at Staleybridge few of those who saw him in London had the means of knowing.  There was nothing in his face to indicate special talent.  No one looking at him would take him to be a fool; but there was none of the fire of genius in his eye, nor was there in the lines of his mouth any of that play of thought or fancy which is generally to be found in the faces of men and women who have made themselves great.  Mr. Turnbull had certainly made himself great, and could hardly have done so without force of intellect.  He was one of the most popular, if not the most popular politician in the country.  Poor men believed in him, thinking that he was their most honest public friend; and men who were not poor