“Ah, you made the most of that. Good! Congreve the Superior could not touch it?” He spoke eagerly.

“Touch it? He could not get near it. I wished afterwards, as I listened to his floundering, that I had elaborated it still more.”

Gastineau’s thoughts seemed to be far away; as though he were living in the scene his brain reconstructed. “I don’t doubt you did very well, my dear boy,” he murmured, still preoccupied. Suddenly he flashed out with a spiteful laugh, “The pattern Robert Congreve at a loss! His Baliol quibbles at a discount for once. Faugh! A brilliant party to depend for its allies upon the callow prigs of the Oxford Union! Ah, to be back again! to be back again!” His clenched hand rose and fell; he gave a great sigh of impotence.

“It is hard on you, old fellow,” Herriard said sympathetically; “cruelly hard. As it is, I only wish that, as your proxy, I could do you more justice.”

The look of almost savage impatience on Gastineau’s face had given place to a quiet smile as he replied. “I could not find a better man for my purpose, Geof. We must both of us have patience,” he gave a short[7] bitter laugh, “a virtue that you should find easier to practise than I, since its exercise need last but a short time with you, while I must die of it. But the savoir attendre pays, Geof, both in the House and at the Bar.”

[7]

Herriard smiled. “That’s just as well, since one has no option but to wait.”

Gastineau gave a quick shake of the head. “Many men won’t wait; they can’t play the game. The world thinks they are waiting, and they flatter themselves so too. But they are really out of it, Geof. They have shot their bolt and missed. Why? Because they were in a hurry. Then there are others, like this fellow Congreve, who get pushed up by the stupid party that mistakes academical show and froth for real power. They manage to keep balanced on their pedestals by the weights of self-advertisement and self-confidence. They act upon the well-known ethical principle that the majority of mankind, being fools too lazy to think for themselves, will appraise a man at his own value, if only he will take care to proclaim the precious figure in season and out. If I were a living instead of a dead man, Geoffrey, I’d blow that fellow out of the water in which he swims so complacently.”

Perhaps it was his glance at the malignant face beneath him that made Herriard remark, “You are a good hater, 

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