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"Alas!" I cried. 'Have you too met with misfortunes? I thought there at Dawley you were the most fortunate of mortals."

"Then, young lady, you committed the error of most of the world in mistaking outward semblance for reality. All the real happiness of my existence I owe to my wife, who has been everything to me, done everything for me, while I have been but a bungler and helped along every evil design of Fate against me. Under this accursed administration, no one has anything to hope for except through Walpole's favouritism. Old men have outlived the shame of losing liberty, and young men are arising who know not that it ever existed; but there are those between, like me, who can look neither back nor forward, but waste their lives in vain strivings and regrets. Here am I shut up tamely there in Dawley, when I would be wrestling at Westminster. Do you call that happiness?

"Oh," I exclaimed, "you will, you must return to power. The king

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Lord Bolingbroke shook his head. 'Do not talk of the king. It is Sir Robert Walpole who governs, and I have no more deadly enemy in the world. Here I am, my person safe and my estates with all the other property I have acquired or may acquire secured to me; but the attainder

is kept carefully and prudently in force, lest so corrupt a member should come again to the House of Lords and his bad leaven sour that sweet untainted mass."

As my Lord Bolingbroke continued, he seemed quite unconscious of me and talked on as if to himself. He finished at last with a deep frown on his brow and a sneer on his lips. As for me, I was carried out of my own troubles and experienced a dumb rage against the minister who was the cause of all my kind friend's wrongs. So deep a hold did this wrath take upon me, that I was never after able to meet Sir Robert or his son Horace without a desire to withhold my hand, and a difficulty in keeping back the expression of my ill will.

While my Lord Bolingbroke was speaking I longed to say something consoling; but he seemed so infinitely above me that I could think of nothing. I could only voice my own sympathy, saying over and over: "Too bad! Too bad! Oh, I wish I could kill Sir Robert Walpole."

Perhaps my absurd words served better than wiser ones, for the frown faded from his lordship's brow and, throwing back his head, he laughed aloud.

"You are not the only person who has experienced that sensation," he said, "but it is

safest not to indulge it. For myself, I have betaken myself long ago to that philosophy which I was commending to you. When I was in exile and much cast down by the thought of enforced absence, I found it a wholesome exercise to take pencil and paper and write down the names of those acquaintances whom I was eager at that moment to meet. I assure you it was a famous tonic to my depression of spirits."

Whilst we were talking we had come to the corner where a theater stood. My Lord Bolingbroke stopped short and pointed to a chalk drawing on the wall. It represented three figures standing in a group, a clown with cap and bells, a dancing girl with a tambourine held above her head, and an old man with his finger to his nose. Under the figures were scrawled the inscription: "The deities of Bath are we Humbug, Folly, and Vanitie."

"For Bath' read the world,'" observed my Lord Bolingbroke, " and we have the key to most human action." Then, with a chuckle, he remarked: "By the Lord, I'll have the picture copied and sent to Lady Penrose with my compliments." Here he paused and laughed aloud at the recollection of my aunt's wrath. "I protest," he said, "I have not given such offense since I once answered a hasty summons from

Queen Anne and made immediate attendance on Her Majesty in my Ramillie instead of my full bottomed wig, which so offended Her Majesty that she exclaimed, 'I suppose your lordship will come to court next time in your night-cap!'

"Indeed," said I, "I cannot ask you to pardon my aunt's rudeness; but some allowance must be made for the pains which she suffers from her rheumatism.”

Lord Bolingbroke laughed again. "Rheumatism! Say her gout! Rheumatism is but the feminine name for that disease, and assumed by ladies who would have us believe they caught it from the weather instead of the wine bottle. Whatever its cause, never fear but Lady Penrose shall have cause to rue her treatment both of me and of you. Here we are and here is Lady Bolingbroke at the door."

CHAPTER XVII

WHICH TELLS OF MY JOURNEY TO LONDON

If anything could have obliterated from my mind the unkindness of my aunt, it would have been the cordiality of my welcome from my Lady Bolingbroke. Her pretty foreign accent only lent an added charm to her speech, and her manner had that ease and warmth mingled with dignity which marked the great lady. I do not know when her husband had found time to tell her my story; but from the beginning she seemed acquainted with it all and threw herself at once into my defense. She confided to me that her own marriage with Lord Bolingbroke had been a secret one, and called upon the results to bear witness to its wisdom. She talked so blithely of my journey, and assumed so great a certainty of its happy outcome, that my spirits rose beyond what I had deemed possible, and, to complete her kindness, she insisted that on reaching London I should go directly to her town house, taking with me a letter to her housekeeper, who, she assured me, would do her utmost for my comfort; but,