The address was strange. It had been submitted to the Committee, and
though it struck them as out-of the-wayish, it had been approved. It
seemed different when read as Old Roses was reading it. The words
sounded inclement as they were chiselled out by the speaker's voice.
Dicky Merritt afterwards declared that many phrases were interpolated
by Old Roses at the moment.

The speaker referred intimately and with peculiar knowledge to the family
history of Lord Malice, to certain more or less private matters which did
not concern the public, to the antiquity of the name, and the high duty
devolving upon one who bore the Earldom of Malice. He dwelt upon the
personal character of His Excellency's antecedents, and praised their
honourable services to the country. He referred to the death of Lord
Malice's eldest brother in Burmah, but he did it strangely. Then, with
acute incisiveness, he drew a picture of what a person in so exalted a
position as a Governor should be and should not be. His voice assuredly
at this point had a touch of scorn. The aides-de-camp were nervous, the
Chairman apprehensive, the Committee ill at ease. But the Governor now
was perfectly still, though, as Vic Lindley thought, rather pinched and
old-looking. His fingers toyed with a wine-glass, but his eyes never
wavered from that paper and the grey hair.

Presently the voice of the speaker changed.

"But," said he, "in Lord Malice we have--the perfect Governor; a man of
blameless and enviable life, and possessed abundantly of discreetness,
judgment, administrative ability and power; the absolute type of English
nobility and British character."