"You are going to be Prime Minister!" she exclaimed. As she spoke she threw her arms up, and then rushed into his embrace. Never since their first union had she been so demonstrative either of love or admiration. "Oh, Plantagenet," she said, "if I can only do anything I will slave for you." As he put his arm round her waist he already felt the pleasantness of her altered way to him. She had never worshipped him yet, and therefore her worship when it did come had all the delight to him which it ordinarily has to the newly married hero.
"Stop a moment, Cora. I do not know how it may be yet. But this I know, that if without cowardice I could avoid this task, I would certainly avoid it."
"Oh no! And there would be cowardice; of course there would," said the Duchess, not much caring what might be the bonds which bound him to the task so long as he should certainly feel himself to be bound.
"He has told me that he thinks it my duty to make the attempt."
"Mr. Gresham. I do not know that I should have felt myself bound by him, but the Duke said so also." This duke was our duke's old friend, the Duke of St. Bungay.
"No one else. It is no case for exultation, Cora, for the chances are that I shall fail. The Duke has promised to help me, on condition that one or two he has named are included, and that one or two whom he has also named are not. In each case I should myself have done exactly as he proposes."
"He will retire. That is a matter of course. He will intend to support us; but all that is veiled in the obscurity which is always, I think, darker as to the future of politics than any other future. Clouds arise, one knows not why or whence, and create darkness when one expected light. But as yet, you must understand, nothing is settled. I cannot even say what answer I may make to her Majesty, till I know what commands her Majesty may lay upon me."
"You must keep a hold of it now, Plantagenet," said the Duchess, clenching her own fist.
"I will not even close a finger on it with any personal ambition," said the Duke. "If I could be relieved from the burden this moment it would be an ease to my heart. I remember once," he said,--and as he spoke he again put his arm around her waist, "when I was debarred from taking office by a domestic circumstance."