day is over."

"That's not the question, Mr. Cutbill. Your personal powers of
captivation no one disputes, if only they get a fair field for their
exercise; but what we fear is that Mr. Sedley, being the hot-tempered,
hasty man he is, will not give you this chance. My brother has twice
already been on the verge of a rupture with him for having acted on his
own independent judgment. I believe nothing but his regard for poor dear
papa would have made him forgive Augustus; and when I tell you that in
the present critical state of our cause his desertion of us would be
fatal, I am sure you will do anything to avert such a calamity."

"Let us meet, Miss Ellen; let us dine together once--I only ask
once--and if I don't borrow money from him before he takes his bedroom
candle, you may scratch Tom Cutbill, and put him off 'the course'
forever. What does that impatient shrug of the shoulders mean? Is it as
much as to say, 'What a conceited snob it is!' eh?"

"Oh, Mr. Cutbill, you could n't possibly--"

"Could n't I, though? And don't I know well that I am Just as vain of
my little talents--as your friend, Miss Julia, called them--as you and
others are ready to ridicule them; but the real difference between us
after all is this: _You_ think the world at large is a monstrous
clever creature, with great acuteness, great discrimination, and great
delicacy; and I _know_ it to be a great overgrown bully, mistaking half
it hears, and blundering all it says, so that any one, I don't care
who he is, that will stand out from the crowd in life, think his own
thoughts and guide his own actions, may just do what he pleases with
that unwieldy old monster, making it believe it's the master, all the
while it is a mere slave and a drudge. There's another shrug of the
shoulders. Why not say it out--you're a puppy, Tom Cutbill?"

"First of all it would n't be polite, and secondly--"

"Never mind the secondly. It's quite enough for me to see that I have
not convinced you, nor am I half as clever a fellow as I think myself;
and do you know, you 're the first I ever knew dispute the position."

"But I do not. I subscribe to it implicitly; my presence here, at this
moment, attests how I believe it. It is exactly because I regard Mr.
Cutbill as the cleverest person I know--the very ablest to extricate one
from a difficulty--that I have come to him this morning."

"My honor is satisfied!" said he, laying his hand on his heart, and
bowing with a