ccasionally Drake would hear a muffled
growl, and, looking in that direction, would see one inflamed eye peering
from a mountain of rugs.

'Satire!' and a husky voice would address the passengers
indiscriminately. 'Satire! and the man's not a day under forty either.'

Drake joined in the laugh and lit his pipe. He was not sensitive to
miscomputations of his years, and felt disinclined to provoke further
outbursts of family confidences.

Instead, he pursued his acquaintance with _A Man of Influence_, realising
now that he must take him seriously and regard him stamped with
Mallinson's approval, a dominating being. He found the task difficult.
The character insisted upon reminding him of the nursery-maid's ideal,
the dandified breaker of hearts and bender of wills; an analytical hero
too, who traced the sentence through the thought to the emotion, which
originally prompted it; whence his success and influence. But for his
strength, plainly aimed at by the author, and to be conceded by the
reader, if the book was to convince? Drake compared him to scree and
shingle as against solid granite. Lean on him and you slip!

The plot was the time-worn, imperishable story of the married couple and
the amorous interloper, the Influential Man, of course, figuring as the
latter, and consequently glorified. The husband was pelted with ridicule
from the first chapter to the last, though for what particular fault
Drake could not discover, unless it were for that of being a husband at
all; so that the interloper in robbing him of his wife was related to
have secured not merely the _succes d'estime_ which accompanies such
enviable feats, but the unqualified gratitude of all married women and
most unmarried men.

There were, no doubt, redeeming qualities; Drake gave them full credit,
and perhaps more than they deserved. He noticed a glitter in the
dialogue, whether of foil or gold he refused to consider, and a lively
imagination in the interweaving of the incidents. But altogether the book
left with him a feeling of distaste, which was not allayed by the
perception that he himself was caricatured in the picture of befooled
husband, while Mallinson figured as the successful deceiver. After all,
he thought, Mallinson and he were friends, and he disliked the mere
imagining of such a relationship between them.

Drake summed up his impressions as his hansom turned into the Bayswater
Road. The day was just beginning to break; the stems of t