welfare, he never failed to affect a keen interest in the affairs
of numbers two, three, four, and the rest. Tom Ryfe was a "friendly
fellow," people declared; "a deuced friendly fellow, and knew what he
was about, mind you, better than most people."

"Every great man," said the Emperor Nicholas, "has a hook in his
nose." In the firmest characters, no doubt, there is a weakness
by which they are to be led or driven; and Tom Ryfe, like other
notabilities, was not without this crevice in his armour, this breach
in his embattled wall. He had shrewdness, knowledge of the world,
common sense, and yet the one great object of his efforts was to be
admitted into a class of society far above his own, and to find there
an ideal lady with whom to pass the rest of his days.

"I'll marry a top-sawyer," he used to say, whenever his uncle broached
the question of his settlement in life. "Why, bless ye, it's the same
tackle and the same fly that takes the big fish and the little one.
It's no more trouble to make up to a duchess than a dairymaid. I'll
pick a real white-handed one, you see if I don't. A wife that can
_move_, uncle, cool, and calm, and lofty, like an air balloon; wearing
her dresses as if she was made for them, and her jewels as if she
didn't know she'd got them on; looking as much at home in the Queen's
drawing-room as she does in her own. That's my sort, and that's the
sort I'll choose! Why, there's scores of 'em to be seen any afternoon
in the Park. Never tell me I can't go in and take my pick. 'Nothing
venture, nothing have,' they say. I ain't going to venture much. I
don't see occasion for it, but I'll _have_ what I want, you see if I
won't, or I'll know the reason why."

Whereon Bargrave, who considered womankind in general as an