us because it charms others. We drink our wines with other men's
palates, and look at our pictures with other men's eyes. When Lily
heard John Eames praised by all around her, it could not be but that
she should praise him too,--not out loud, as others did, but in the
silence of her heart. And then his constancy to her had been so
perfect! If that other one had never come! If it could be that she
might begin again, and that she might be spared that episode in her
life which had brought him and her together!

"When is Mr. Eames going to be back?" Mrs. Thorne said at dinner one
day. On this occasion the squire was dining at Mrs. Thorne's house;
and there were three or four others there,--among them a Mr. Harold
Smith, who was in Parliament, and his wife, and John Eames's especial
friend, Sir Raffle Buffle. The question was addressed to the squire,
but the squire was slow to answer, and it was taken up by Sir Raffle
Buffle.

"He'll be back on the 15th," said the knight, "unless he means to
play truant. I hope he won't do that, as his absence has been a
terrible inconvenience to me." Then Sir Raffle explained that John
Eames was his private secretary, and that Johnny's journey to the
Continent had been made with, and could not have been made without,
his sanction. "When I came to hear the story, of course I told him
that he must go. 'Eames,' I said, 'take the advice of a man who knows
the world. Circumstanced as you are, you are bound to go.' And he
went."

"Upon my word that was very good-natured of you," said Mrs. Thorne.

"I never keep a fellow to his desk who has really got important
business elsewhere," said Sir Raffle. "The country, I say, can afford
to do as much as that for her servants. But then I like to know that
the business is business. One doesn't choose to be humbugged."

"I daresay you are humbugged, as you call it, very often," said
Harold Smith.

"Perhaps so; perhaps I am; perhaps that is the opinion which they
have of me at the Treasury. But you were hardly long enough there,
Smith, to have learned much about it, I should say."

"I don't suppose I should have known much about it, as you call it,
if I had stayed till Doomsday."

"I daresay not; I daresay not. Men who begin as late as you did never
know what official life really means. Now I've been at it all my
life, and I think I do understand it."

"It's not a profession I should like unless where it's joined with
politics," said Harold Smi