is a delightful man to know."

"Do you really mean--?" I began.

"I will apologize," he said calmly, "for our not being dressed for a
call," and walking across the vast misty square, he walked up the dark
stone steps and rang at the bell.

A severe servant in black and white opened the door to us: on receiving
my friend's name his manner passed in a flash from astonishment to
respect. We were ushered into the house very quickly, but not so quickly
but that our host, a white-haired man with a fiery face, came out
quickly to meet us.

"My dear fellow," he cried, shaking Basil's hand again and again,
"I have not seen you for years. Have you been--er--" he said, rather
wildly, "have you been in the country?"

"Not for all that time," answered Basil, smiling. "I have long given
up my official position, my dear Philip, and have been living in a
deliberate retirement. I hope I do not come at an inopportune moment."

"An inopportune moment," cried the ardent gentleman. "You come at the
most opportune moment I could imagine. Do you know who is here?"

"I do not," answered Grant, with gravity. Even as he spoke a roar of
laughter came from the inner room.

"Basil," said Lord Beaumont solemnly, "I have Wimpole here."

"And who is Wimpole?"

"Basil," cried the other, "you must have been in the country. You must
have been in the antipodes. You must have been in the moon. Who is
Wimpole? Who was Shakespeare?"

"As to who Shakespeare was," answered my friend placidly, "my views go
no further than thinking that he was not Bacon. More probably he was
Mary Queen of Scots. But as to who Wimpole is--" and his speech also was
cloven with a roar of laughter from within.

"Wimpole!" cried Lord Beaumont, in a sort of ecstasy. "Haven't you heard
of the great modern wit? My dear fellow, he has turned conversation,
I do not say into an art--for that, perhaps, it always was but into a
great art, like the statuary of Michael Angelo--an art of masterpieces.
His repartees, my good friend, startle one like a man shot dead. They
are final; they are--"

Again there came the hilarious roar from the room, and almost with the
very noise of it, a big, panting apoplectic old gentleman came out of
the inner house into the hall where we were standing.

"Now, my dear chap," began Lord Beaumont hastily.

"I tell you, Beaumont, I won't stand it," exploded the large old
gentleman. "I won't be made game of by a twopenny literary adventurer
like th