extensive writing-table, his left hand dropped, with a rather awkward
negligence, over the arm of his chair. Meanwhile he gazed, as pensively
as his caste of countenance permitted, at a portrait of himself, in the
self-same attitude, which adorned the opposite wall. It had been
presented to him by the electors of his late constituency. It was life-
size and full-length. It had been painted by a well-known artist whose
appreciation of the outward as a revelation of the inward man is slightly
diabolic in its completeness. The portrait was very clever; it was also
very like. Looking upon it no sane observer could stand in doubt of Sir
Abel's eminent respectability or eminent wealth. His appearance exuded
both. Unluckily nature had been niggardly in the bestowal of those more
delicate marks of breeding which, both in man and beast, denote
distinction of personality and antiquity of race. Pursy, prolific,
Protestant, a commonness pervaded the worthy gentleman's aspect, causing
him, as compared with his head clerk, Dominic Iglesias--standing there
patiently awaiting his further utterance--to be as is a cheap oleograph
to a fine sketch in pen and ink. It may be taken as an axiom that, in
body and soul alike, to be deficient in outline is a sad mistake. But of
all these little facts and the result of them, Sir Abel was, needless to
relate, sublimely ignorant.

"With you, my good friend, it is otherwise," he remarked presently,
reluctantly removing his gaze from the portrait of himself. "A beneficent
Providence has devised the law of compensation. And we may remark the
workings of it everywhere with instruction and encouragement. Hence
social obscurity has its compensating advantages. You, for example, are
affected by none of those considerations of public obligation binding
upon myself. You are so situated that you can avoid the more trying
consequences of this universal overstrain. If the demands of the position
you now fill are too much for you, you can retire. I congratulate you,