There are two classes of persons in this realm who are
constitutionally inefficient to take any part in returning members
to Parliament--peers, namely, and women; and yet it was soon known
through the whole length and breadth of the county that the present
electioneering fight was being carried on between a peer and a
woman. Miss Dunstable had been declared the purchaser of the Chace
of Chaldicotes, as it were, just in the very nick of time; which
purchase--so men in Barsetshire declared, not knowing anything of the
facts--would have gone altogether the other way, had not the giants
obtained temporary supremacy over the gods. The duke was a supporter
of the gods, and therefore, so Mr. Fothergill hinted, his money had
been refused. Miss Dunstable was prepared to beard this ducal friend
of the gods in his own county, and therefore her money had been
taken. I am inclined, however, to think that Mr. Fothergill knew
nothing about it, and to opine that Miss Dunstable, in her eagerness
for victory, offered to the Crown more money than the property was
worth in the duke's opinion, and that the Crown took advantage of her
anxiety, to the manifest profit of the public at large. And it soon
became known also that Miss Dunstable was, in fact, the proprietor
of the whole Chaldicotes estate, and that in promoting the success
of Mr.
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