the
classics. The combination of these qualities, with the tact and
versatile fluency of a man of the world, was a rare one, and was a
source of unceasing surprise to his intimates. At the present moment he
was a diplomatist, since he could not be a diplomat, and to his
energetic suggestion and furtherance of the plan he had devised the
results which this tale will set forth are mainly due.

Claudius sat upon the sofa watching the old gentleman, and wondering how
it was that a stranger should so soon have assumed the position of an
adviser, and with an energy and good sense, too, which not only disarmed
resistance, but assubjugated the consent of the advised. Life is full of
such things. Man lives quietly like a fattening carp in some old pond
for years, until some idle disturber comes and pokes up the mud with a
stick, and the poor fish is in the dark. Presently comes another
destroyer of peace, less idle and more enterprising, and drains away
the water, carp and all, and makes a potato-garden of his old haunts. So
the carp makes a new study of life under altered circumstances in other
waters; and to pass the time he wonders about it all. It happens even to
men of masterful character, accustomed to directing events. An illness
takes such a man out of his sphere for a few months. He comes back and
finds his pond turned into a vegetable-garden and his ploughed field
into a swamp; and then for a time he is fain to ask advice and take it,
like any other mortal. So Claudius, who felt himself in an atmosphere
new to him, and had tumbled into a very burning bush of complications,
had fallen in with Mr. Horace Bellingham, a kind of professional
bone-setter, whose province was the reduction of society fractures,
speaking medically. And Mr. Bellingham, scenting a patient, and moreover
being strongly attracted to him on his own merits, had immediately
broached the subject of the Nihilist Nicholas, drawing the conclusion
that the man of the emergency was Claudius, and Claudius only. And the
bold Doctor weighed the old gentleman's words, and by the light of what
he felt he knew that Uncle Horace was right. That if he loved Margaret
his first duty was to her, and that first duty was her welfare. No
messenger could or would be so active in her interests as himself; and
in his anxiety to serve her he had not thought it strange that Mr.
Bellingham should take it for granted he was ready to embark on the
expedition. He thought of that