er with a
bottle of mine, while he, with a frankness impossible to a less gifted
person, was dazzling me by his wisdom and his wickedness.

I wish it were possible for me to put down the gesture, the grace of
language, the lightness of touch, the deliberate choice of one word
over another, with which this talk was flowered; but I can, at least,
state that it had to me a living kind of deviltry in it that raised me
out of my surroundings, as a play or great music might have done, or
the clash of some great event.

"I was a poor boy," the duke began, "at fourteen, a poor Highland body
with estates in a begging condition, and a sickly frame--a stoop and
haggled lungs, but something, _something_ within me that would not
down, that would accept no defeat. I made this body of mine over. I
trained myself until I could endure hardship like the Indians and bear
pain like a stoic. It took four years of my life for this, and it was
upon its completion that I began to mend the fortunes of the family. I
looked out into the world with more cynical eyes than generally do the
observing boys of my age, and found self-interest to be the lever which
moves the human thing we call man. _Man!_" he cried, with a laugh.
"Lord! there aren't ten men in England to-day, or do you think I would
be where I am? There was shamelessness, even a touch of villainy in my
creed; but it was, after all, admirably adapted to the folk with whom I
had to deal. But with my fortune and my increase of power my ambition
rose higher and higher. I could handle men at my will; but I began to
ask myself questions as to the use of doing it at all. I was honest
with myself, and I saw, I think, clearly that I got my power by using
the _worst_ in men.

"Well, my lord, I met your daughter, and it seemed to me I found she
had a better power than my own. As I have said, my ambition is
boundless. I desire always the best. I believe she is a fine
philosopher, she can win at my own game. Oh," he interrupted himself,
"I would not be setting it out to you that it's my head alone she's
touched, for I am as daft in my love for her as any schoolboy could be,
but I'm just telling you that, both from my ambition and my love, I
want her for my wife.

"The first thing," he went on, "which I have to face beside yourself is
this Carmichael man. If I had met him in any other relation in life I
should have forgotten him within a fortnight; but he has been forced
upon my notice--there ar