r, however, believed Skeffy to be the rising diplomatist,
the embryo Talleyrand of Great Britain; and it was strange to see an
old, crafty, case-hardened man of the world listening with implicit
trustfulness to the hare-brained speculations of a young fellow, whose
solitary pretensions were, that he sent off his daily balderdash marked
"On Her Majesty's Service," and sealed with the royal arms.

Lady Lyle only half believed in him; and as for Alice, she laughed at,
but liked him; while Bella gave him all her confidence, and admired him
greatly. And a very nice thing it is of young ladies, and never to be
too much commended, how they will hang on the words, and store up the
sayings, and repeat the opinions of the man who prefers them. It is
not exactly Love, no more than gooseberry wine is champagne; but it
effervesces and exhilarates, and I 'm not sure if it does not agree very
well with weak constitutions.

Now Skeffy told Bella every morning in the most mysterious manner how he
had checkmated Bresson, the French Minister, and outwitted Caraffa
and the Cardinal Riario. They never could make out whence he had his
information. The Queen had spent a fortune in paying spies to watch him,
but he out-manoeuvred them all. Nobody knew--nobody ever could know--the
resources of his craft; and, indeed, except Louis Napoleon, there was
not a man in Europe had fathomed the depth of his astuteness. "I have
to pretend," would he say, "to be a light, flippant, volatile creature,
given up to pleasure, fond of play, of the ballet, and all that sort of
thing. I let them bear every day of the sums I have lost at lansquenet,
and the enormous extravagance of my daily life, but they don't know what
goes on here," and he would tap his forehead; "they never suspect what
plots and plans and machinations are at work within that brain they
imagine to be abandoned to enjoyment. It will come out one of these
days, dearest Bella; they'll know who 'did it' yet." And this was a
very favorite phrase with him, and Bella caught it up, and talked of the
people who had not "done it," and never could "do it," and hinted at one
whom an ignorant world would awake one morning to see had "done it," and
"done it" to perfection.

To hear him talk, you would say that he rather liked the mistaken
estimate the world had formed of him; that it was one of those excellent
jokes whose point lay in a surprise; and what a surprise would that be
one of these days when he