liberal-minded--that is to say, among people fond of talking more
or less vaguely about very large subjects. For talk he never found
himself at a loss, and his faculty in this direction certainly grew.
But as yet he had not discovered the sphere which was wholly
sympathetic and at the same time fertile of opportunity.

Among the many possibilities of life which lie before a young and
intelligent man, one never presented itself to Dyce Lashmar's
meditation. The thought of simply earning his living by
conscientious and useful work, satisfied with whatever distinction
might come to him in the natural order of things, had never entered
his mind. Every project he formed took for granted his unlaborious
pre-eminence in a toiling world. His natural superiority to mankind
at large was, with Dyce, axiomatic. If he used any other tone about
himself, he affected it merely to elicit contradiction; if in a
depressed mood he thought otherwise, the reflection was so at
conflict with his nature that it served only to strengthen his
self-esteem when the shadow had passed.

The lodgings he occupied were just like any other for which a man
pays thirty shillings a week. Though he had lived here for two or
three years, there was very little to show that the rooms did not
belong to some quite ordinary person; Dyce spent as little time at
home as possible, and, always feeling that his abode in such poor
quarters must be transitory, he never troubled himself to increase
their comfort, or in any way to give character to his surroundings.
His library consisted only of some fifty volumes, for he had never
felt himself able to purchase books; Mudie, and the shelves of his
club, generally supplied him with all he needed. The club, of
course, was an indispensable luxury; it gave him a West-end address,