The Gathering of Clouds Throughout June and the first week of July the affairs of the Ministry went on successfully, in spite of the social sins of the Duke and the occasional despair of the Duchess.

There had been many politicians who had thought, or had, at any rate, predicted, that the Coalition Ministry would not live a month.

There had been men, such as Lord Fawn on one side and Mr.Boffin on the other, who had found themselves stranded disagreeably,--with no certain position,--unwilling to sit immediately behind a Treasury bench from which they were excluded, and too shy to place themselves immediately opposite.

Seats beneath the gangway were, of course, open to such of them as were members of the Lower House, and those seats had to be used; but they were not accustomed to sit beneath the gangway.

These gentlemen had expected that the seeds of weakness, of which they had perceived the scattering, would grow at once into an enormous crop of blunders, difficulties, and complications; but, for a while, the Ministry were saved from these dangers either by the energy of the Prime Minister, or the popularity of his wife, or perhaps by the sagacity of the elder Duke;--so that there grew up an idea that the Coalition was really the proper thing.