And as a conquering hero Victoria welcomed her new Prime Minister.
Then there followed six years of excitement, of enchantment, of felicity, of glory, of romance.

The amazing being, who now at last, at the age of seventy, after a lifetime of extraordinary struggles, had turned into reality the absurdest of his boyhood's dreams, knew well enough how to make his own, with absolute completeness, the heart of the Sovereign Lady whose servant, and whose master, he had so miraculously become.

In women's hearts he had always read as in an open book.

His whole career had turned upon those curious entities; and the more curious they were, the more intimately at home with them he seemed to be.

But Lady Beaconsfield, with her cracked idolatry, and Mrs.
Brydges-Williams, with her clogs, her corpulence, and her legacy, were gone: an even more remarkable phenomenon stood in their place.