over him during a brief ten minutes of
conversation, what the very deuce would happen if he allowed himself to
be drawn into anything approaching the easy-going shipboard
intimacy--deck-walking by moonlight, chairs drawn up in a snug corner
during the heat of the day, and so forth! Who knew what latent
capacities for being made an ass of might not develop themselves within
him. He felt really alarmed.

Let it not be supposed that any scruple on the ground of
conventionality, obligation, what not, entered into his misgivings. For
Laurence Stanninghame had been clean disillusioned all along the line.
He hadn't the shred of an illusion left. He had started life with a fair
stock-in-trade of good intentions and straight ideas, and, indeed, had
acted up to them honestly, and in good faith. But now?--"I've had a
h----l of a time!" he would exclaim to himself, during one of those
meditative gazes out seaward, for which we heard his younger friend
taking him to task. "Yes--just that." And now, only touching middle
life, he believed in nothing and nobody. He had become a cold, keen,
strong-headed, selfish cynic. If ever his mind reverted to the fresher
and more generous impulses or actions of his younger days, it was with a
contemptuous self-pity. His view of the morality of life now was just
the amount of success, of advantage, of gratification to be got out of
it. He thoroughly indorsed the principle of the old _roue's_ advice to
his grandson: "Be good, and you _may_ be happy--but you'll have d----d
little fun," taking care to italicise the word "may." For he had found
that the first clause of the saw had brought him neither happiness nor
fun.

With his fellow-passengers on board the _Persian_ he was neither
popular nor the reverse. Among the men, some liked him, others didn't.
He was genial enough, and good company in the smoking room, but wouldn't
do anything in the way of promoting the general amusement--and that
voyage was a particularly lively one in the matter of getting things up.
The fair section of the saloon was puzzled, and could not make up its
mind whether to dislike him or not. For the first, he consistently,
though not ostentatiously, avoided it, instead of laying himself out to
make himself agreeable--though indications were not wanting that he
could so make himself if he chose. For the second, the fact that he
remained an unknown quantity was in his favour, if only that the
unfamiliarity of reserve--mystery