d, so much for the good of the State as for the
convenience of his chief, who, naturally, found it unsatisfactory to
have to go out into the lobby in order to get hold of his private
secretary. Rivers was devoted to his chief in his own sort of way. That
way was not like the devotion of Hamilton to the Dictator; for it is
very likely that, in his own secret soul, Rivers occasionally made fun
of Sir Rupert, with his Quixotic ideas and his sentimentalisms, and his
views of life. Rivers had no views on the subject of life or of anything
else. But Hamilton himself could not be more careful of his chief's
interests than was Rivers. Rivers had no beliefs and no prejudices. He
was not an immoral man, but he had no prejudice in favour of morality;
he was not cruel, but he had no objection to other people being as cruel
as they liked, as cruel as the law would allow them to be, provided that
their cruelty was not exercised on himself, or any one he particularly
cared about. He never in his life professed or felt one single impulse
of what is called philanthropy. It was to him a matter of perfect
indifference whether ten thousand people in some remote place did or did
not perish by war, or fever, or cyclone, or inundation. Nor did he care
in the least, except for occasional political purposes, about the
condition of the poor in our rural villages or in the East End of
London. He regarded the poor as he regarded the flies--that is, with
entire indifference so long as they did not come near enough to annoy
him. He did not care how they lived, or whether they lived at all. For a
long time he could not bring himself to believe that Helena Langley
really felt any strong interest in the poor. He could not believe that
her professed zeal for their welfare was anything other than the
graceful affectation of a pretty and clever girl.

But we all have our weaknesses, even the strongest of us, and Soame
Rivers found, when he began to be much in companionship with Helena
Langley, where the weak point was to be hit in his panoply of pride. To
him love and affection and all that sort of thing were mere sentimental
nonsense, encumbering a rising man, and as likely as not, if indulged
in, to spoil his whole career. He had always made up his mind to the
fact that, if he ever did marry, he must marry a woman with money. He
would not marry at all unless he could have a house and entertain as
other people in society were in the habit of doing. As a b