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"It was perfectly true He had had nothing out of thes of the earth, craved for by predatory

natures He had gratified no tastes, had known no luxury; he had built

no gorgeous palaces, had foralleries out of these

"ione into these roo no doubt perfect

satisfaction to the ement They had twice raised his rent to show I

suppose their high sense of his distinguished patronage He had bought

for hiers neither

adulation nor love, neither splendour nor co

perfect in his consistent ratification of even the mere show of power In the days when he was

most fully in the public eye the invincible obscurity of his origins

clung to hiar of what is counted as precious in the community of

men, because he had neither the brutality of temperament nor the fineness

of mind to make him desire them with the will power of a masterful

adventurer"

"You seem to have studied the htfully "No! Not studied I had no

opportunities You know that I saw him only on that one occasion I told

you of But it li an individuality; and de Barral was that, in virtue of his very

deficiencies for theyquite unlike one's

preconceived ideas There were also very few ment froood as a feast--perhaps better If one has a taste

for that kind of thing the e, and then by a series of logically deducted verisimilitudes one

arrives at truth--or very near the truth--as near as any circumstantial