th an air so thoroughbred that, had you seen him in
the day when the opera-house had a crushroom and a fops' alley,--seen
him in either of those resorts, surrounded by elaborate dandies and
showy beauty-men, dandies and beauty-men would have seemed to
you secondrate and vulgar; and the eye, fascinated by that quiet
form,--plain in manner, plain in dress, plain in feature,--you would
have said, "How very distinguished it is to be so plain!" Knowing the
great world from the core to the cuticle, and on that knowledge basing
authority and position, Colonel Morley was not calculating, not cunning,
not suspicious,--his sagacity the more quick because its movements were
straightforward; intimate with the greatest, but sought, not seeking;
not a flatterer nor a parasite, but when his advice was asked (even if
advice necessitated reproof) giving it with military candour: in fine,
a man of such social reputation as rendered him an ornament and prop
to the House of Vipont; and with unsuspected depths of intelligence and
feeling, which lay in the lower strata of his knowledge of this world
to witness of some other one, and justified Darrell in commending a
boy like Lionel Haughton to the Colonel's friendly care and admonitory
counsels. The Colonel, like other men, had his weakness, if weakness it
can be called: he believed that the House of Vipont was not merely
the Corinthian capital, but the embattled keep--not merely the _dulce
decus_, but the _praesidium columenque rerum_--of the British monarchy.
He did not boast of his connection with the House; he did not provoke
your spleen by enlarging on its manifold virtues; he would often have
his harmless jest against its members, or even against its pretensions:
but such seeming evidences of forbearance or candour were cunning
devices to mitigate envy. His devotion to the House was not obtrusive:
it was profound. He loved the House of Vipont for the sake of England:
he loved England for the sake of the House of Vipont. Had it been
possible, by some tremendous reversal of the ordinary laws of nature, to
dissociate the cause of England from the cause of the House of Vipont,
the Colonel would have said, "Save at least the Ark of the Constitution!
and rally round the old House!"

The Colonel had none of Guy Darrell's infirmity of family pride; he
cared not a rush for mere pedigrees,--much too liberal and enlightened
for such obsolete prejudices. No! He knew the world too well not to be
qu