His Grace — page 96: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

go HIS GRACE. who pledges himself to support a Tory administration ; a contest of the kind which had just been witnessed, ought never to have taken place at all, and if the juvenile nobleman who had exerted himself so ostenta- tiously in promoting the candidature of Mr. Somers had been a little older and a little more experienced, he would have thrown the weight of his influence, such as it was, into the scale on his cousin’s behalf. ‘That is the sort of gratitude that one obtains from one’s friends when one has been beaten. I don’t think Hurstbourne was greatly disheartened or distressed by the comments of the press; but he did not affect to deny that Paul Gascoigne’s triumph was a heavy blow to him. “That beggar has got first blood,’’ said he; “there’s no disputing that. He’s very much mistaken if he thinks I shall throw up the sponge, though. We'll do better at the next election, and in the meantime he won’t trample me underfoot without a fight for it, I can tell him.” | “Never,” declared Lady Charles, who was highly incensed, “ will we receive that man or speak to him again! He deserves to be cut by the head of the family, and cut he shall be.” Nora, though not less angry, was a good deal less silly. ‘You mustn’t let him think that you feel in the least sore,” said she: “the best plan would be to ask him to dinner and congratulate him and pat him on the back. He has secured a-seat in Parliament—much good may it do him! Who, except a few really clever people, cares to spend the best part of the year listening to dreary debates in a stuffy chamber, filled with vulgar nobodies? Parliament isn’t everything, and Gomichboo cS (E(0)