adopted a tone of half-playful, half-mournful satire, which might be in
itself disguise. Alban Morley, with all his good qualities, was a man of
the world; as a man of the world, Guy Darrell talked to him. But it was
only a very small part of Guy Darrell the Man, of which the world could
say "mine."

To Lionel he let out, as if involuntarily, the more amiable, tender,
poetic attributes of his varying, complex, uncomprehended character; not
professedly confiding, but not taking pains to conceal. Hearing what
worldlings would call "Sentiment" in Lionel, he seemed to glide softly
down to Lionel's own years and talk "sentiment" in return. After all,
this skilled lawyer, this noted politician, had a great dash of the boy
still in him. Reader, did you ever meet a really clever man who had not?




CHAPTER VIII.

Saith a very homely proverb (pardon its vulgarity), "You cannot make
a silk purse out of a sow's ear." But a sow's ear is a much finer
work of art than a silk purse; and grand, indeed, the mechanician
who could make a sow's ear out of a silk purse, or conjure into
creatures of flesh and blood the sarcenet and /tulle/ of a London
drawing-room.

"Mamma," asked Honoria Carr Vipont, "what sort of a person was Mrs.
Darrell?"

"She was not in our set, my dear," answered Lady Selina. "The Vipont