, "and yet," he said to Lord
Houghton, "of course a peculiar sanctity attaches, itself to dying
wishes. What would you do in such a situation as mine?" For a little
while Lord Houghton reflected, and then answered, with an air of grave
detachment, "I always tell my family totally to disregard everything I
say during the last six months of my life."

Of his social philosophy otherwise he gave me in the days of my youth
many pithy expositions, with hints as to what I should do when I entered
the world myself. One of his pieces of advice was especially appropriate
to Torquay. This was to make the acquaintance of old Mr. Bevan, a
lifelong intimate of his own. Accordingly my introduction to this
mysterious personage was accomplished.

Mr. Bevan lived in a large villa close to that which was occupied by
Miss Burdett-Coutts. Its discreetly shuttered windows, like so many
half-closed eyelids, gave, when viewed externally, the impression that
it was asleep or tenantless; but to ring the front-door bell was to
dissipate this impression immediately. The portals seemed to open by
clockwork. Heavy curtains were withdrawn by servitors half seen in the
twilight, and the visitors were committed to the care of an Austrian
groom of the chambers, who, wearing the aspect of a king who had
stepped out of the Almanach de Gotha, led the way over soundless carpets
to a library. This was furnished with a number of deep armchairs; and I
recollect how, on the first occasion of my entering it, each of these
chairs was monopolized by a drowsy Persian cat. For a moment, the light
being dim, these cats, so it seemed to me, were the sole living things
present; but a second later I was aware that a recumbent figure was
slowly lifting itself from a sofa. This was Mr. Bevan. His attire was a
blue silk dressing-gown, a youthfully smart pair of black-and-white
check trousers, varnished boots, and a necktie with a huge pearl pin in
it, the pearl itself representing the forehead of a human skull. His
hands were like ivory, his face was like a clear-cut cameo. With the aid
of a gold-headed cane that had once belonged to Voltaire he gently
evicted a cat, so that I might occupy the chair next to him, and said,
in the language of Brummell's time, that he was "monstrous glad to see
me." He pointed to objects of interest which adorned his walls and
tables, such as old French fashion-plates of ladies in very scanty
raiment; to musical clocks, of which several were