disturbed you.'

'Yes, yes; one must get into no bad habits in London. All right; I'll
get up now, and be with you in twenty minutes.'

'Very well, Excellency.' Hamilton bowed as he spoke in his most official
manner, and withdrew. The Dictator looked after him, laughing softly to
himself.

'L'excellence malgre lui,' he thought. 'An excellency in spite of
myself. Well, I dare say Hamilton is right; it may serve to fill my
sails when I have any sails to fill. In the meantime let us get up and
salute London. Thank goodness it isn't raining, at all events.'

He did his dressing unaided. 'The best master is his own man' was an
axiom with him. In the most splendid days of Gloria he had always
valeted himself; and in Gloria, where assassination was always a
possibility, it was certainly safer. His body-servant filled his bath
and brought him his brushed clothes; for the rest he waited upon
himself.

He did not take long in dressing. All his movements were quick, clean,
and decisive; the movements of a man to whom moments are precious, of a
man who has learnt by long experience how to do everything as shortly
and as well as possible. As soon as he was finished he stood for an
instant before the long looking-glass and surveyed himself. A man of
rather more than medium height, strongly built, of soldierly carriage,
wearing his dark frock-coat like a uniform. His left hand seemed to miss
its familiar sword-hilt. The face was bronzed by Southern suns; the
brown eyes were large, and bright, and keen; the hair was a fair brown,
faintly touched here and there with grey. His full moustache and beard
were trimmed to a point, almost in the Elizabethan fashion. Any serious
student of humanity would at once have been attracted by the face.
Habitually it wore an expression of gentle gravity, and it could smile
very sweetly, but it was the face of a strong man, nevertheless, of a
stubborn man, of a man ambitious, a man with clear resolve, personal or
otherwise, and prompt to back his resolve with all he had in life, and
with life itself.

He put into his buttonhole the green-and-yellow button which represented
the order of the Sword and Myrtle, the great Order of La Gloria, which
in Gloria was invested with all the splendour of the Golden Fleece; the
order which could only be worn by those who had actually ruled in the
republic. That, according to satirists, did not greatly limit the number
of persons who had the right to wear it. Th