SCENE VIII.—LADY FLUMM’S _Drawing-room_. LADY FLUMM; LADY SELINA; HON.

MRS. FUBSEY.

_Mrs. Fubsey._ But, my dear sister; how _can_ you so beflatter that poor man? You don’t know all the mischief you may do to him.

_Lady Flumm._ “Poor man!” I cannot pity him. His maxim is, that knowledge is power; and he thinks _his_ {290} knowledge is all that can be known. He has to learn that _our_ knowledge, also, is power; and that we know how to use it too.

_Enter_ LORD FLUMM.

_Lord Flumm._ There, Lady Selina, so much for your philosophic friend. Poor Turnstile! What a business he _has_ made of it. Here is the “Times,” with the report of the Shoreditch election meeting. Turnstile has no chance. The Scotchmen coalesce; Highway none of us can think of; and Smooth and MacLeech walk over the ground in triumph; and then, the Presidency of Manufactures, the _very_ appointment for which poor Turnstile was fitted (and, to do the poor devil justice, he could have filled it well), is given to MacLeech, a Scotch hanger on, or distant cousin of Smooth’s, and with the old salary, in spite of all that Hume could say against it.—Bravo! Reform, and the Whigs for ever!—We Tories could not have done the business in a better style.

_Enter a Footman._

_Footman._ Mr. Turnstile, my Lady, sends up his card.

_Lady Flumm._ Oh, not at home! And Sleek, put a memorandum in the visiting-book, that we are “out of town,” whenever Mr. Turnstile calls.