 folly ever talked!« he delivered himself in
wrath. »The Whigs dead? You may as well say I 'm dead.«
    It was Beauchamp answering: »Politically, you 're dead, if you call yourself
a Whig. You couldn't be a live one, for the party 's in pieces, blown to the
winds. The country was once a chess-board for Whig and Tory: but that game 's at
an end. There 's no doubt on earth that the Whigs are dead.«
    »But if there 's no doubt about it, how is it I have a doubt about it?«
    »You know you 're a Tory. You tried to get that man Dollikins from me in the
Tory interest.«
    »I mean to keep him out of Radical clutches. Now that 's the truth.«
    They came up to the group by the open window, still conversing hotly,
indifferent to listeners.
    »You won't keep him from me; I have him,« said Beauchamp.
    »You delude yourself; I have his promise, his pledged word,« said Grancey
Lespel.
    »The man himself told you his opinion of renegade Whigs.«
    »Renegade!«
    »Renegade Whig is an actionable phrase,« Mr. Culbrett observed.
    He was unnoticed.
    »If you don't like renegade, take dead,« said Beauchamp. »Dead Whig
resurgent in the Tory. You are dead.«
    »It 's the stupid conceit of your party thinks that.«
    »Dead, my dear Mr. Lespel. I 'll say for the Whigs, they would not be seen
touting for Tories if they were not ghosts of Whigs. You are dead. There is no
doubt of it.«
    »But,« Grancey Lespel repeated, »if there 's no doubt about it, how is it I
have a doubt about it?«
    »The Whigs preached finality in Reform. It was their own funeral sermon.«
    »Nonsensical talk!«
    »I don't dispute your liberty of action to go over to the Tories, but you
have no right to attempt to take an honest Liberal with you. And that I 've
stopped.«
    »Aha! Beauchamp; the man 's mine. Come, you 'll own he swore he wouldn't
vote for a Shrapnelite.«
    »Don't you remember? - that 's how the Tories used to fight you; they stuck
an epithet to you, and hooted to set the mob
