tment, and discovered
that he had dined with Prince Midchekoff, and not yet returned. Not
knowing how to spend the hours, so much earlier than those of his
usually retiring to rest, he lighted a cigar, and threw himself on a
sofa before the fire.

The reveries of men who live much in the world are seldom very
agreeable. The work of self-examination comes with a double penalty when
it is rarely exercised, and the heavy arrears of time are formidable
scores to confront. Lord Norwood was no exception to this theory. Not
that he was one to waste time or temper in self-reproaches. The bygone
was essentially with him the "irrevocable." It might, it is true,
occasionally suggest a hint for the future, but it never originated a
sorrow for the past. His philosophy was a very brief code, and comprised
itself in this, "that he did n't think well of himself, but thought
worse of all others." All that he had seen of life was duplicity,
falsehood, selfishness, and treachery. In different stations these
characteristics took different forms; and what was artfully cloaked in
courtesy by the lord was displayed in all its naked deformity by the
plebeian.

He might have conducted himself respectably enough had he been rich, at
least he fervently believed so; but he was poor, and therefore driven to
stratagems to maintain his position in society. Cheated by his guardians
and neglected by his tutor, he was sent into the world half ruined,
and wholly ignorant, to become at first a victim, and afterwards the
victimizer. With no spirit of retributive vengeance, there was nothing
of reprisal in his line of conduct, he simply thought that such was the
natural and inevitable course of events, and that every man begins as
dupe, and ends as knave. The highest flight of the human mind, in his
esteem, was successful hypocrisy; and although without the plastic wit
or the actual knowledge of life which are required well to sustain a
part, he had contrived to impose upon a very large number of persons who
looked up to his rank; for, strange enough, many who would not have been
duped by a commoner, fell easy victims to the arts of "my Lord."

The value of his title he understood perfectly. He knew everything it
could, and everything it could not, do for him. He was aware that the
aristocracy of England would stand by one of their order through many
vicissitudes, and that he who is born to a coronet has a charmed life,
in circumstances where one less no