particular gloom when his eyes fell on the young lady of the house
rapturously listening to Wimpole.

"May I have a word with you outside, Drummond?" asked Grant. "It is
about business. Lady Beaumont will excuse us."

I followed my friend, at his own request, greatly wondering, to this
strange external interview. We passed abruptly into a kind of side room
out of the hall.

"Drummond," said Basil sharply, "there are a great many good people, and
a great many sane people here this afternoon. Unfortunately, by a kind
of coincidence, all the good people are mad, and all the sane people
are wicked. You are the only person I know of here who is honest and has
also some common sense. What do you make of Wimpole?"

Mr Secretary Drummond had a pale face and red hair; but at this his face
became suddenly as red as his moustache.

"I am not a fair judge of him," he said.

"Why not?" asked Grant.

"Because I hate him like hell," said the other, after a long pause and
violently.

Neither Grant nor I needed to ask the reason; his glances towards Miss
Beaumont and the stranger were sufficiently illuminating. Grant said
quietly:

"But before--before you came to hate him, what did you really think of
him?"

"I am in a terrible difficulty," said the young man, and his voice told
us, like a clear bell, that he was an honest man. "If I spoke about him
as I feel about him now, I could not trust myself. And I should like to
be able to say that when I first saw him I thought he was charming. But
again, the fact is I didn't. I hate him, that is my private affair. But
I also disapprove of him--really I do believe I disapprove of him quite
apart from my private feelings. When first he came, I admit he was much
quieter, but I did not like, so to speak, the moral swell of him. Then
that jolly old Sir Walter Cholmondeliegh got introduced to us, and this
fellow, with his cheap-jack wit, began to score off the old man in the
way he does now. Then I felt that he must be a bad lot; it must be
bad to fight the old and the kindly. And he fights the poor old chap
savagely, unceasingly, as if he hated old age and kindliness. Take, if
you want it, the evidence of a prejudiced witness. I admit that I hate
the man because a certain person admires him. But I believe that apart
from that I should hate the man because old Sir Walter hates him."

This speech affected me with a genuine sense of esteem and pity for the
young man; that is, of pity f