to stand distinct from the rest of the face, like a feature that had
learned its part. There was that physical power in the back of the
head which belongs to men who make their way in life,--combative and
destructive. All gladiators have it; so have great debaters and great
reformers,--that is, reformers who can destroy, but not necessarily
reconstruct. So, too, in the bearing of the man there was a hardy
self-confidence, much too simple and unaffected for his worst enemy to
call it self-conceit. It was the bearing of one who knew how to
maintain personal dignity without seeming to care about it. Never
servile to the great, never arrogant to the little; so little
over-refined that it was never vulgar,--a popular bearing.

The room in which these gentlemen were seated was separated from the
general suite of apartments by a lobby off the landing-place, and
served for Lady Beaumanoir's boudoir. Very pretty it was, but simply
furnished, with chintz draperies. The walls were adorned with
drawings in water-colours, and precious specimens of china on fanciful
Parian brackets. At one corner, by a window that looked southward and
opened on a spacious balcony, glazed in and filled with flowers, stood
one of those high trellised screens, first invented, I believe, in
Vienna, and along which ivy is so trained as to form an arbour.

The recess thus constructed, and which was completely out of sight
from the rest of the room, was the hostess's favourite writing-nook.
The two men I have described were seated near the screen, and had
certainly no suspicion that any one could be behind it.

"Yes," said Mr. Danvers, from an ottoman niched in another recess of
the room, "I think there will be an opening at Saxboro' soon: Milroy
wants a Colonial Government; and if we can reconstruct the Cabinet as