said Leicester. "I want a fair field and no
favour. All I demand is that you chaps shall hold your tongues. This
conversation must not go beyond these walls. That's fair, isn't it?"

"That's nothing but just," said Winfield.

"But how are you to get an introduction?" said Sprague. "Old John
Castlemaine is very particular as to whom he has at his house, and
although I have consented to this business, I'll take no part in it."

"Nor I," said Purvis; "and now I come to think about it, I withdraw from
it altogether."

"Except to pay your hundred pounds if I succeed," said Leicester.

"You can't back out from that," remarked Winfield.

"Still, I'll be a party to nothing," he said weakly. "Of course I know
it'll end in nothing. Miss Castlemaine is one of the cleverest women I
know, and she'll see through everything at a glance."

"Then I'm to have fair play?"

"Oh yes, I shall not interfere with you. There will be no need."

"That is to say, not a whisper of this conversation goes outside this
room."

"Of course that is but fair," urged Winfield again.

"Very well," said Purvis, "I shall say nothing; but mind you, I do not
believe in the business. It's wrong, it's not--well, it's not in good
form. But there, it doesn't matter. It'll end in nothing."

"Exactly," said Leicester; but there was a strange light in his eyes.
"And you, Sprague, you'll act straight, too?"

"Oh, certainly," said Sprague. "I shall say nothing; all the same, I
don't like it. But Leicester'll give up the whole idea to-morrow. He'd
never have thought of it to-night if he hadn't been drunk."

"I drunk, my friends! I am as sober as the Nonconforming parson of the
church that Miss Castlemaine attends. I'm as serious as a judge. No, no,
I stand on principle--principle, my friends. I have a theory of life,
and I stand by it, and I am ready to make sacrifices."

"But how are you to get an introduction?" asked Sprague. Evidently he
was uneasy in his mind.

"Leave that to me; I ask you to do nothing but to hold your tongues, and
that you've promised to do. I stand alone. I'm like your Martin Luther
of old times. Against me are arrayed conventions and orthodoxy, pride
and prejudice, thunders temporal and spiritual, but I fear them not.
I--I, a poor solitary cynic, am stronger than you all, because I stand
on the truth, and you stand on sentiment, convention, orthodoxy.
Gentlemen, I drink to you in very mediocre club whisky; nay, I don't
drink to