rn a man of brains and a Briton! Once that it's known that you
stand above your fellow-men, the whole world is arrayed against you.
Who knows that better than he who now speaks to you? Have I ever been
forgiven the Erzeroum convention? Even George Canning--from whom one
might have expected better--even he used to say, 'How well Culduff
managed that commercial treaty with the Hanse Towns!' he never got over
it, sir, never! You are a young fellow entering upon life--let me give
you a word of counsel. Always be inferior to the man you are, for the
time being, in contact with. Outbid him, outjockey him, overreach him,
but never forget to make him believe he knows more of the game than you
do. If you have any success over him, ascribe it to 'luck,' mere 'luck.'
The most envious of men will forgive 'luck,' all the more if they
despise the fellow who has profited by it. Therefore, I say, if the
intellectual standard of your rival is only four feet, take care that
with your tallest heels on, you don't stand above three feet eleven! No
harm if only three ten and a half."

The little applauding ha! ha! ha! with which his Lordship ended was
faintly chorussed by the secretary.

"And what is your news from home; you 've had letters, have n't you?"

"Yes. Augustus writes me in great confusion. They have not found the
will, and they begin to fear that the very informal scrap of paper I
already mentioned is all that represents one."

"What! do you mean that memorandum stating that your father bequeathed
all he had to Augustus, and trusted he would make a suitable provision
for his brothers and sisters?"

"Yes; that is all that has been found. Augustus says in his last
letter, my poor father would seem to have been most painfully affected
for some time back by a claim put forward to the title of all his landed
property, by a person assuming to be the heir of my grandfather, and
this claim is actually about to be asserted at law. The weight of this
charge and all its consequent publicity and exposure appear to have
crushed him for some months before his death, and he had made great
efforts to effect a compromise."

A long, low, plaintive whistle from Lord Culduff arrested Temple's
speech, and for a few seconds there was a dead silence in the room.

"This, then, would have left you all ruined--eh?" asked Culduff, after a
pause.

"I don't exactly see to what extent we should have been liable--whether
only the estated property, or