‘It will do all the good in the world to Grancey,’ said Mrs. Lespel.

She sat in her little blue-room, with gentlemen congregating at the open window.

Presently Grancey Lespel rounded a projection of the house where the drawing-room stood out:  ‘The maddest folly ever talked!’ he delivered himself in wrath.  ‘The Whigs dead?  You may as well say I’m dead.’

It was Beauchamp answering:  ’Politically, you’re dead, if you call yourself a Whig.  You couldn’t be a live one, for the party’s in pieces, blown to the winds.  The country was once a chess-board for Whig and Tory:  but that game’s at an end.  There’s no doubt on earth that the Whigs are dead.’

‘But if there’s no doubt about it, how is it I have a doubt about it?’

’You know you’re a Tory.  You tried to get that man Dollikins from me in the Tory interest.’

’I mean to keep him out of Radical clutches.  Now that ‘s the truth.’

They came up to the group by the open window, still conversing hotly, indifferent to listeners.

‘You won’t keep him from me; I have him,’ said Beauchamp.

‘You delude yourself; I have his promise, his pledged word,’ said Grancey Lespel.

‘The man himself told you his opinion of renegade Whigs.’

‘Renegade!’

‘Renegade Whig is an actionable phrase,’ Mr. Culbrett observed.

He was unnoticed.

‘If you don’t like “renegade,” take “dead,"’ said Beauchamp.  ’Dead Whig resurgent in the Tory.  You are dead.’

‘It’s the stupid conceit of your party thinks that.’

’Dead, my dear Mr. Lespel.  I’ll say for the Whigs, they would not be seen touting for Tories if they were not ghosts of Whigs.  You are dead.  There is no doubt of it.’

‘But,’ Grancey Lespel repeated, ’if there’s no doubt about it, how is it I have a doubt about it?’

‘The Whigs preached finality in Reform.  It was their own funeral sermon.’

‘Nonsensical talk!’

’I don’t dispute your liberty of action to go over to the Tories, but you have no right to attempt to take an honest Liberal with you.  And that I’ve stopped.’

’Aha!  Beauchamp; the man’s mine.  Come, you’ll own he swore he wouldn’t vote for a Shrapnelite.’

’Don’t you remember?—­that’s how the Tories used to fight you; they stuck an epithet to you, and hooted to set the mob an example; you hit them off to the life,’ said Beauchamp, brightening with the fine ire of strife, and affecting a sadder indignation.  ’You traded on the ignorance of a man prejudiced by lying reports of one of the noblest of human creatures.’

‘Shrapnel?  There!  I’ve had enough.’  Grancey Lespel bounced away with both hands outspread on the level of his ears.

‘Dead!’ Beauchamp sent the ghastly accusation after him.

Grancey faced round and said, ‘Bo!’ which was applauded for a smart retort.  And let none of us be so exalted above the wit of daily life as to sneer at it.  Mrs. Lespel remarked to Mr. Culbrett, ’Do you not see how much he is refreshed by the interest he takes in this election?  He is ten years younger.’