not be induced to fight it as became a man. Any positive injunctions that were laid upon him he did in a sort obey. It had been a part of the bargain that he should stand the contest, and from that bargain he could not well go back; but he had not the spirit left to him for any true fighting on his own part. He could not go up on the hustings, and there defy the duke. Early in the affair Mr. Fothergill challenged him to do so, and Mr. Sowerby never took up the gauntlet.
"We have heard," said Mr. Fothergill, in that great speech which he made at the Omnium Arms at Silverbridge—"we have heard much during this election of the Duke of Omnium, and of the injuries which he is supposed to have inflicted on one of the candidates. The duke's name is very frequent in the mouths of the gentlemen—and of the lady—who support Mr. Sowerby's claims. But I do not think that Mr. Sowerby himself has dared to say much about the duke. I defy Mr. Sowerby to mention the duke's name upon the hustings."
And it so happened that Mr. Sowerby never did mention the duke's name.
It is ill fighting when the spirit is gone, and Mr. Sowerby's spirit for such things was now well-nigh broken. It is true that he had escaped from the net in which the duke, by Mr. Fothergill's aid, had entangled him, but he had only broken out of one captivity into another. Money is a serious thing, and, when gone, can not be had back by a shuffle in the game, or a fortunate blow with the battledoor, as may political power, or reputation, or fashion. One hundred thousand pounds gone must remain as gone, let the person who claims to have had the honor of advancing it be Mrs. B. or my Lord C. No lucky dodge can erase such a claim from the things that be, unless, indeed, such dodge be possible as Mr. Sowerby tried with Miss Dunstable. It was better for him, undoubtedly, to have the lady for a creditor than the duke, seeing that it was possible for him to live as a tenant in his own old house under the lady's reign. But this he found to be a sad enough life, after all that was come and gone.
The election on Miss Dunstable's part was lost. She carried on the contest nobly, fighting it to the last moment, and sparing neither her own money nor that of her antagonist; but she carried it on unsuccessfully. Many gentle-
