dden in the dusk of the
summer night, they have given the Princess Sabaroff her chamber. He
remains some time at the open window, and goes to his bed as the dawn
grows rosy.

"Lord Brandolin is in a very bad temper," says Mr. Wootton, when the
smoking-room door has closed on the object of his detestation; then he
pauses, and adds, significantly, "The Brandolins, you know, were always
a little--just a little--clever family, very clever, but we all know to
what great wits are sadly often allied. And this man has never done
anything, with all his talent and opportunities; never done anything at
all!"

"He has written first-rate books," says Usk, angrily, always ready to
defend a friend in absence.

"Oh, books!" says "Mr. Wootton, with bland but unutterable disdain. Mr.
Wootton is a critic of books, and therefore naturally despises them.

"What would you have him do?" growls Usk, pugnaciously.

Mr. Wootton stretches his legs out, and gazes with abstracted air at the
ceiling. "Public life," he murmurs. "Public life is the only possible
career for an Englishman of position. But it demands sacrifices; it
demands sacrifices."

"You mean that one has to marry?" says the young Duke of Queenstown,
timidly.

Mr. Wootton smiles on him loftily. "Marry? yes, undoubtedly; and avoid
scandals afterwards; avoid, beyond all, those connections which lend
such a charm to existence, but are so apt to get into the newspapers."

There is a general laugh.

Mr. Wootton has not intended to make them laugh, and he resumes, with
stateliness, as though they had not interrupted him. "The country
expects those sacrifices: no man succeeds in public life in England who
does not make them."

"Melbourne, Palmerston, Sidney Herbert?" murmurs one rebellious hearer.

Mr. Wootton waves him aside as he would do an importunate fly. "Not to
touch on living persons, I would select Lord Althorp as the model of the
public leader most suited to this country. It would not suit Lord
Brandolin to lead the blameless life of Lord Althorp. It would not suit
him even to pretend to lead it. I doubt if he could even look the part,
if he tried. The English are a peculiar people; they always mix public
and private life together. Lord Beaconsfield remarked to me once----"

And Mr. Wootton tells a story of Disraeli, a very good story, only he
has taken it out of the journals of the President des Brosses and
fathered it on to Disraeli. But M. le President des Brosse