Mr Secretary Drummond had a pale face and red hair; but at this his
face became suddenly as red as his moustache.

"I am not a fair judge of him," he said.

"Why not?" asked Grant.

"Because I hate him like hell," said the other, after a long pause
and violently.

Neither Grant nor I needed to ask the reason; his glances towards
Miss Beaumont and the stranger were sufficiently illuminating.
Grant said quietly:

"But before--before you came to hate him, what did you really think
of him?"

"I am in a terrible difficulty," said the young man, and his voice
told us, like a clear bell, that he was an honest man. "If I spoke
about him as I feel about him now, I could not trust myself. And I
should like to be able to say that when I first saw him I thought
he was charming. But again, the fact is I didn't. I hate him, that
is my private affair. But I also disapprove of him--really I do
believe I disapprove of him quite apart from my private feelings.
When first he came, I admit he was much quieter, but I did not
like, so to speak, the moral swell of him. Then that jolly old Sir
Walter Cholmondeliegh got introduced to us, and this fellow, with
his cheap-jack wit, began to score off the old man in the way he
does now. Then I felt that he must be a bad lot; it must be bad to