at this hour of the morning?"

"I think I can guess," said the grim individual who had corrected him
in the matter of genealogy; "he's off to F. O. to ask for the special
mission he has just declared that none of us should stoop to accept."

"You 've hit it, Grindesley," cried another. "I 'll wager a pony you
're right."

"It's so like him."

"After all, it's the sort of thing he's best up to. La Ferronaye told
me he was the best master of the ceremonies in Europe."

"Why come amongst us at all, then? Why not get himself made a
gold-stick, and follow the instincts of his genius?"

"Well, I believe he wants it badly," said one who affected a tone of
half kindliness. "They tell me he has not eight hundred a year left
him."

"Not four. I doubt if he could lay claim to three."

"He never had in his best day above four or five thousand, though he
tells you of his twenty-seven or twenty-eight."

"He had originally about six; but he always lived at the rate of twelve
or fifteen, and in mere ostentation too."

"So I 've always heard." And then there followed a number of little
anecdotes of Culduff's selfishness, his avarice, his meanness, and such
like, told with such exactitude as to show that every act of these men's
lives was scrupulously watched, and when occasion offered mercilessly
recorded.

While they thus sat in judgment over him, Lord Culduff himself was
seated at a fire in a dingy old room in Downing Street, the Chief
Secretary for Foreign Affairs opposite him. They were talking in a tone
of easy familiarity, as men might who occupied the same social station,
a certain air of superiority, however, being always apparent in the
manner of the Minister towards the subordinate.

"I don't think you can ask for this, Culduff," said the great man, as he
puffed his cigar tranquilly in front of him. "You've had three of these
special missions already."

"And for the simple reason that I was the one man in England who knew
how to do them."

"We don't dispute the way you did them; we only say all the prizes in
the wheel should not fall to the same man."

"You have had my proxy for the last five years."

"And we have acknowledged the support--acknowledged it by more than
professions."

"I can only say this, that if I had been with the other side, I 'd have
met somewhat different treatment."

"Don't believe it, Culduff. Every party that is in power inherits its
share of obligations. We have never disowned t