CHAPTER XXXVII
The mysterious coldness of the Douglases was unpleasantly explained the next day. The Duke of Broughton found it necessary to propose a second candidate, and he thought it advisable to choose a gentleman connected with the borough, rather than one of his own adherents. A requisition was got up in a few hours, and a deputation appointed to convey it to Mr. Douglas, and he was also assured by the duke's agent that he should be returned free of all expense if he would consent to be put in nomination.
Mr. Douglas would rather have declined the honour; he was no politician, he did not fancy the trouble of canvassing, and, above all, he did not like the idea of opposing the Eskdales. But this last contingency naturally delighted Mrs. Douglas, and her weight was forthwith thrown into the Broughton scale. The château qui parle et femme qui écoute are not more certain to capitulate than is the English gentleman who ponders over the requisition of a body of electors. After walking at least five miles up and down his library, contradicting in a sort of snappish agony every suggestion made by his wife, by Mr. Wentworth, and by Scrimshaw, the duke's agent, and after having declared fourteen several times that nothing should induce him to undertake the task of an election, he was sufficiently composed to sit down and write, under the dictation of Scrimshaw, his address to the electors, soliciting their votes. And at the moment in which Lady Eskdale drove to the door to solicit his support, he was making his entry into
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