o be a profound authority
on politics, home and foreign. He was a harmless poor devil enough, from
whom a merciful Providence had concealed the fact that his brain-power
was of the smallest. His companion, reclining in the easy-chair, was a
youthful Fine Art Professor; a gelatinous creature, a bundle of languid
affectations, with the added and fluttering self-consciousness of a
school-miss. He was absently assenting to the propositions of the florid
gentleman; but it is probable that his soul was elsewhere.

These propositions were to the effect that leading articles in a
newspaper were a mere impertinence; that he himself never read such
things; that the business of a newspaper was to supply news; and that an
intelligent Englishman was better capable of forming a judgment on
public affairs than the hacks of a newspaper-office. The intelligent
Englishman then proceeded to deliver his own judgment on the question of
the day, which turned out to be--to Mr. Brand's great surprise--nothing
more nor less than a blundering and inaccurate _resume_ of the opinions
expressed in a leading article in that morning's _Times_. At length this
one-sided conversation between a jackanapes and a jackass became too
intolerable for Brand, who threw away his cigarette, and descended once
more into the hall.

"A gentleman wishes to see you, sir," said a boy; and at the same moment
he caught sight of Lord Evelyn.

"Thank God!" he exclaimed, hurrying forward to shake his friend by the
hand. "Come, Evelyn, what are you up to? I can't stand England any
longer; will you take a run with me?--Algiers, Egypt, anywhere you like.
Let us drop down to Dover in the afternoon, and settle it there. Or what
do you say to the Riviera? we should be sure to run against some people
at one or other of the towns. Upon my life, if you had not turned up, I
think I should have cut my throat before lunch-time."

"I have got something better for you to do than that," said the other;
"I want you to see O'Halloran. Come along; I have a hansom here. We
shall just catch him at Atkinson's, the book-shop, you know."

"Very well; all right," Brand said, briskly: this seemed to be rather a
more cheerful business than cutting one's throat.

"He's at his telegraph-wire all night," Lord Evelyn said, in the hansom.
"Then he lies down for a few hours' sleep on a sofa. Then he goes along
to his rooms in Pimlico for breakfast; but at Atkinson's he generally
stops for awhile on