They behaved admirably; advanced the money at a low rate, and the entire interest of the Khedive is now yours, Madam." Nor did he limit himself to highly-spiced insinuations.

Writing with all the authority of his office, he advised the Queen that she had the constitutional right to dismiss a Ministry which was supported by a large majority in the House of Commons, he even urged her to do so, if, in her opinion, "your Majesty's Government have from wilfulness, or even from weakness, deceived your Majesty." To the horror of Mr.Gladstone, he not only kept the Queen informed as to the general course of business in the Cabinet, but revealed to her the part taken in its discussions by individual members of it.

Lord Derby, the son of the late Prime Minister and Disraeli's Foreign Secretary, viewed these developments with grave mistrust.

"Is there not," he ventured to write to his Chief, "just a risk of encouraging her in too large ideas of her personal power, and too great indifference to what the public expects?
I only ask; it is for you to judge." As for Victoria, she accepted everything--compliments, flatteries, Elizabethan prerogatives--without a single qualm.

After the long gloom of her bereavement, after the chill of the Gladstonian discipline, she expanded to the rays of Disraeli's devotion like a flower in the sun.
The change in her situation was indeed miraculous.