hose fine, acute intelligences which may
be gapped and blunted if applied to rough work, but are splendid
instruments where you would cut cleanly and cut deep. She saw this at
once. He, too, recognized in her a wonderful knowledge of life, joined
to vast powers of employing it with profit. No more was wanting to
establish a friendship between them. Dispositions must be, to a certain
degree, different between those who are to live together as friends, but
tastes must be alike. Theirs were so. They had the same veneration for
the same things, the same regard for the same celebrities, and the same
contempt for the small successes which were engaging the minds of
many around them. If the Princess had a real appreciation of the fine
abilities of Sir Horace, he estimated at their full value all the
resources of her wondrous tact and skill, and the fascinations which
even yet surrounded her.

Have we said enough to explain the terms of this alliance, or must we
make one more confession, and own that her insidious praise--a flattery
too delicate and fine ever to be committed to absolute eulogy--convinced
Sir Horace that she alone, of all the world, was able to comprehend the
vast stores of his knowledge, and the wide measure of his capacity as a
statesman?

In the great game of statecraft, diplomatists are not above looking into
each other's hands; but this must always be accomplished by means of
a confederate. How terribly alike are all human rogueries, whether the
scene be a conference at Vienna, or the tent of a thimblerig at Ascot!
La Sabloukoff was unrivalled in the art. She knew how to push raillery
and _persiflage_ to the very frontiers of truth, and even peep over and
see what lay beyond. Sir Horace traded on the material with which she
supplied him, and acquired the reputation of being all that was crafty
and subtle in diplomacy.

How did Upton know this? Whence came he by that? What mysterious source
of information is he possessed of? Who could have revealed such a secret
to him? were questions often asked in that dreary old drawing-room
of Downing Street, where men's destinies are shaped, and the fate of
millions decided, from four o'clock to six of an afternoon.

Often and often were the measures of the Cabinet shaped by the tidings
which arrived with all the speed of a foreign courier; over and over
again were the speeches in Parliament based upon information received
from him. It has even happened that the new