he might
have set inquiring minds on the track of game which he wished to hunt
down for himself; Kilshaw was annoyed at having been forced into such an
open display of his relations with and his influence over Benham. Even
to himself, his dealings with the man were a delicate subject. Almost
every one has one or two matters which he would rather not discuss with
his own conscience; and his bargain with Benham was one of these tabooed
topics to Kilshaw. For, in spite of what he had done in this instance,
he belonged to a class which some righteous and superior people will
have it does not exist. He was a conscientious politician--a man who, in
the main, was honest and straightforward; prone indeed to think that
what he had was necessarily identical with what he ought to have, and
that any law not based on a recognition of this fact was an iniquitous
law, but loyal to his friends, his class, his party, and his country;
ready to spend and work for his own rights' sake, but no niggard of time
or money in larger causes; sincere in his convictions, dauntless in
affirming and upholding them, hardly conceiving that honest men could
differ from them; strong in his self-confidence, believing that the best
men always won, suspecting from the bottom of his heart every appeal to
sentiment in the mouth of a politician. Such he was--a type of the man
of success, with the hardness that success is apt to bring, but with the
virtues that attain it; and his defects and merits had made him, for
years past, Sir Robert Perry's most valued lieutenant, and a very pillar
of the cautious conservative ideas on which that statesman's influence
was based.

And now Mr. Kilshaw, impelled less by mere self-interest than by the
rankling of a personal feud, had--dipped the end of his fingers in
pitch. He had resented fiercely Medland's hardly disguised attack on
him, and it had fanned into flame the wrath which the Premier's schemes,
threatening the profits of himself and his fellow-capitalists, and the
Premier's principles, redolent to his nostrils of the quackery and
hypocrisy that he hated, had set alight in his heart. Against such a man
and such a policy, was not everything fair? Was it not even fair to use
a tool like Benham, if the tool put itself in his hand?

Yet he was ashamed; but, being in secret ashamed, he, as men often do,
set his face and went on his way all the more obstinately.

He bought Mr. Benham, Mr. Benham and his secret; they w