Mr Palliser was chiefly known to the world as a rising politician.  We may say that he had everything at his command, in the way of pleasure, that the world could offer him.  He had wealth, position, power, and the certainty of attaining the highest rank among, perhaps, the most brilliant nobility of the world.  He was courted by all who could get near enough to court him.  It is hardly too much to say that he might have selected a bride from all that was most beautiful and best among English women.  If he would have bought race-horses, and have expended thousands on the turf, he would have gratified his uncle by doing so.  He might have been the master of hounds, or the slaughterer of hecatombs of birds.  But to none of these things would he devote himself.  He had chosen to be a politician, and in that pursuit he laboured with a zeal and perseverance which would have made his fortune at any profession or in any trade.  He was constant in committee-rooms up to the very middle of August.  He was rarely absent from any debate of importance, and never from any important division.  Though he seldom spoke, he was always ready to speak if his purpose required it.  No man gave him credit for any great genius—­few even considered that he could become either an orator or a mighty statesman.  But the world said that he was a rising man, and old Nestor of the Cabinet looked on him as one who would be able, at some far future day, to come among them as a younger brother.  Hitherto he had declined such inferior offices as had been offered to him, biding his time carefully; and he was as yet tied hand and neck to no party, though known to be liberal in all his political tendencies.  He was a great reader—­not taking up a book here, and another there, as chance brought books before him, but working through an enormous course of books, getting up the great subject of the world’s history,—­filling himself full of facts,—­though perhaps not destined to acquire the power of using those facts otherwise than as precedents.  He strove also diligently to become a linguist—­not without success, as far as a competent understanding of various languages.  He was a thin-minded, plodding, respectable man, willing to devote all his youth to work, in order that in old age he might be allowed to sit among the Councillors of the State.

Hitherto his name had not been coupled by the world with that of any woman whom he had been supposed to admire; but latterly it had been observed that he had often been seen in the same room with Lady Dumbello.  It had hardly amounted to more than this; but when it was remembered how undemonstrative were the two persons concerned,—­how little disposed was either of them to any strong display of feeling,—­even this was thought matter to be mentioned.  He certainly would speak to her from time to time almost with an air of interest; and Lady Dumbello, when she saw that he was in the room, would be observed to raise her head with some little show of life, and to look round