useful contact with any political group. All he could
claim for encouragement was a personal something which drew attention,
especially the attention of women, in circles of the
liberal-minded--that is to say, among people fond of talking more or
less vaguely about very large subjects. For talk he never found himself
at a loss, and his faculty in this direction certainly grew. But as yet
he had not discovered the sphere which was wholly sympathetic and at
the same time fertile of opportunity.

Among the many possibilities of life which lie before a young and
intelligent man, one never presented itself to Dyce Lashmar's
meditation. The thought of simply earning his living by conscientious
and useful work, satisfied with whatever distinction might come to him
in the natural order of things, had never entered his mind. Every
project he formed took for granted his unlaborious pre-eminence in a
toiling world. His natural superiority to mankind at large was, with
Dyce, axiomatic. If he used any other tone about himself, he affected
it merely to elicit contradiction; if in a depressed mood he thought
otherwise, the reflection was so at conflict with his nature that it
served only to strengthen his self-esteem when the shadow had passed.

The lodgings he occupied were just like any other for which a man pays
thirty shillings a week. Though he had lived here for two or three
years, there was very little to show that the rooms did not belong to
some quite ordinary person; Dyce spent as little time at home as
possible, and, always feeling that his abode in such poor quarters must
be transitory, he never troubled himself to increase their comfort, or
in any way to give character to his surroundings. His library consisted
only of some fifty volumes, for he had never felt himself able to
purchase books; Mudie, and the shelves of his club, generally supplied
him with all he needed. The club, of course, was an indispensable
luxury; it gave him a West-end address, enabled him to have a friend to
lunch or dine in decent circumstances without undue expense, and
supplied him with very good stationery for his correspondence.
Moreover, it pleasantly enlarged his acquaintance. At the club he had
got to know Lord Dymchurch, a month or two ago, and this connection he
did not undervalue. His fellow members, it is true, were not, for the
most part, men of the kind with whom Dyce greatly cared to talk; as
yet, they did not seem much impressed wi