On the Wednesday night, however, it was known that everything had been arranged, and before the Houses met on the Thursday every place had been bestowed, either in reality or in imagination.  The Times, in its second edition on the Thursday, gave a list of the Cabinet, in which four places out of fourteen were rightly filled.  On the Friday it named ten places aright, and indicated the law officers, with only one mistake in reference to Ireland; and on the Saturday it gave a list of the Under Secretaries of State, and Secretaries and Vice-Presidents generally, with wonderful correctness as to the individuals, though the offices were a little jumbled.  The Government was at last formed in a manner which everybody had seen to be the only possible way in which a government could be formed.  Nobody was surprised, and the week’s work was regarded as though the regular routine of government making had simply been followed.  Mr. Mildmay was Prime Minister; Mr. Gresham was at the Foreign Office; Mr. Monk was at the Board of Trade; the Duke was President of the Council; the Earl of Brentford was Privy Seal; and Mr. Palliser was Chancellor of the Exchequer.  Barrington Erle made a step up in the world, and went to the Admiralty as Secretary; Mr. Bonteen was sent again to the Admiralty; and Laurence Fitzgibbon became a junior Lord of the Treasury.  Mr. Ratler was, of course, installed as Patronage Secretary to the same Board.  Mr. Ratler was perhaps the only man in the party as to whose destination there could not possibly be a doubt.  Mr. Ratler had really qualified himself for a position in such a way as to make all men feel that he would, as a matter of course, be called upon to fill it.  I do not know whether as much could be said on behalf of any other man in the new Government.

During all this excitement, and through all these movements, Phineas Finn felt himself to be left more and more out in the cold.  He had not been such a fool as to suppose that any office would be offered to him.  He had never hinted at such a thing to his one dearly intimate friend, Lady Laura.  He had not hitherto opened his mouth in Parliament.  Indeed, when the new Government was formed he had not been sitting for above a fortnight.  Of course nothing could be done for him as yet.  But, nevertheless, he felt himself to be out in the cold.  The very men who had discussed with him the question of the division,—­who had discussed it with him because his vote was then as good as that of any other member,—­did not care to talk to him about the distribution of places.  He, at any rate, could not be one of them.  He, at any rate, could not be a rival.  He could neither mar nor assist.  He could not be either a successful or a disappointed sympathiser,—­because he could not himself be a candidate.  The affair which perhaps disgusted him more than anything else was the offer of an office,—­not in the Cabinet, indeed, but one supposed to confer high dignity,—­to Mr. Kennedy.  Mr. Kennedy refused the offer, and this somewhat lessened Finn’s disgust, but the offer itself made him unhappy.