Had the Westminster triumph been altogether a triumph it would have become the pleasant duty of some popular Conservative to express to Melmotte the pleasure he would have in introducing his new political ally to the House. In such case Melmotte himself would have been walked up the chamber with a pleasurable ovation and the thing would have been done without trouble to him. But now this was not the position of affairs. Though the matter was debated at the Carlton, no such popular Conservative offered his services. 'I don't think we ought to throw him over,' Mr Beauclerk said. Sir Orlando Drought, quite a leading Conservative, suggested that as Lord Nidderdale was very intimate with Mr Melmotte he might do it. But Nidderdale was not the man for such a performance. He was a very good fellow and everybody liked him. He belonged to the House because his father had territorial influence in a Scotch county;--but he never did anything there, and his selection for such a duty would be a declaration to the world that nobody else would do it. 'It wouldn't hurt you, Lupton,' said Mr Beauclerk. 'Not at all,' said Lupton; 'but I also, like Nidderdale am a young man and of no use,--and a great deal too bashful.' Melmotte, who knew but little about it, went down to the House at four o'clock, somewhat cowed by want of companionship, but carrying out his resolution that he would be stopped by no phantom fears,--that he would lose nothing by want of personal pluck. He knew that he was a Member, and concluded that if he presented himself he would be able to make his way in and assume his right. But here again fortune befriended him. The very leader of the party, the very founder of that new doctrine of which it was thought that Melmotte might become an apostle and an expounder,--who, as the reader may remember, had undertaken to be present at the banquet when his colleagues were dismayed and untrue to him, and who kept his promise and sat there almost in solitude,--he happened to be entering the House, as his late host was claiming from the doorkeeper the fruition of his privilege. 'You had better let me accompany you,' said the Conservative leader, with something of chivalry in his heart. And so Mr Melmotte was introduced to the House by the head of his party! When this was seen many men supposed that the rumours had been proved to be altogether false. Was not this a guarantee sufficient to guarantee any man's respectability?




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