to B[oe]otia after living in Attica----"

"It's one's life does it."

"What life? One has the life one wishes."

"That's the sort of thing a man says who hasn't married."

"My dear George, you cannot pretend your wife would prevent your reading
Latin and Greek, or even Sanscrit. I am sure she would much sooner you
read them than--well, than do other things you do do."

"I don't say she would prevent me," returns the lord of Surrenden, with
some crossness, "but it's the kind of life one gets into that kills all
that sort of thing in one. There is no time for it."

"I keep out of the life: why don't you?"

"There's no time for anything," says Usk, gloomily. "There's such heaps
of things to see to, and such numbers of places to go to, and then one
lives _au jour le jour_, and one gets into the swim and goes on, and
then there's the shooting, and when there isn't the shooting there's the
season, and the racing."

"I lead my own life," Brandolin remarks.

"Yes; but you don't mind being called eccentric."

"No; I don't mind it in the least. If they say nothing worse of me I am
grateful."

"But you couldn't do it if you had all my places, and all my houses, and
all my brothers, and all my family. You're a free agent. I declare that
all the time goes away with me in such a crowd of worries that I've
hardly a second to smoke a cigarette in, in any peace!"

Brandolin smiles.

A sixth part of most days his host passes leaning back in some
easy-chair with a cigar in his mouth, whether his venue be Surrenden,
Orme, Denton, the smoking-room of a club, or the house of a
friend,--whether London or the country. Usk's own view of himself is of
a man entirely devoted to, and sacrificed to, business, politics, the
management of his estates, and the million-and-one affairs which
perpetually assail him; but this is not the view which his friends take
of him.

When ever is the view that our friends take of us our view?

"Once a scholar always a scholar, it seems to me," says Brandolin. "I
could as soon live without air as without books." And he quotes
Cowley,--

"Books should as business entertain the light."

"You don't continue the quotation," says Usk, with a smile.

"_Autres temps autres m[oe]urs_," says Brandolin. He laughs, and gets
up: it is four in the afternoon; the delicious green garden is lying
bathed in warm amber light; one of the peacocks is turning round slowly
with all his train displayed; he seems