lle. The firelight behind them
emphasised the neat outline of his legs. He carried a black cloak on
his left arm, and in his left hand an opera-hat, pressed flat against
his left side. In closing the window, in finding and producing the
pistol, and again in lighting the candles, he had used his right hand
only.

'A gentleman?' he asked, contracting his brows and eyeing me.

'Well,' said I, with an uncomfortable, nervous laugh, that itself
accused my breeding, so inferior it was to the situation, 'possibly
you are one of those who mix up the name with moral conduct--'

'To some extent,' he answered, without seeming to interrupt.
'Every one does, I fancy.'

'At any rate I won't challenge it,' said I. 'But you may, if you
will, call me a man of some education. I was at Magdalen once, but
left Oxford without taking my degree.'

'Ah!' He inclined his head a little to one side. 'Cards?'

'Certainly not,' I answered with heat. 'I own that appearances are
against me, but I was never that kind of man. As a matter of fact,
it happened over a horse.'

He nodded. 'So you, too, though you won't challenge the name, have
to mix up moral conduct with your disposition. We draw the line
variously, but every one draws it somewhere. . . . Magdalen, hey?
If I mistake not, the foundationers of Magdalen--including, perhaps,
some who were undergraduates with you--are assembled in the college
hall at this moment to celebrate Christmas, and hear the choir sing
Pergolese's "Gloria."'

'The reminder hurts me,' said I--'if that be any gratification to
you.'

'A sentimentalist?' Mr Felix's eyes twinkled.

'Better and better! I have the very job for you--but we will discuss
that by-and-by. Only let me say that you must have dropped on me,
just now, from heaven--you really must. But please don't make a
practice of it! I have invested too much in my curios; and others
have invested more. . . . That snuff-box, for instance, which you
were handling a moment ago . . . at one time in its history it cost--
ay, and fetched--close on two hundred millions of money.'

I began to have hopes that I was dealing with a madman.

'Or rather,' he corrected himself, 'the money was paid for a pinch of
the snuff it contains. Open it carefully, if you please! and you
will behold the genuine rappee, the very particles over which France
fought with Austria. What says Virgil? '_Hi motus animorum atque
heac cerlamina tanta Pulveris exigui ja