ded so much as a matter of course that it ceases to be
objectionable. The caricaturist, who draws only caricatures, is held
to be justifiable, let him take what liberties he may with a man's
face and person. It is his trade, and his business calls upon him to
vilify all that he touches. But were an artist to publish a series of
portraits, in which two out of a dozen were made to be hideous, he
would certainly make two enemies, if not more. Mr Alf never made
enemies, for he praised no one, and, as far as the expression of his
newspaper went, was satisfied with nothing.

Personally, Mr Alf was a remarkable man. No one knew whence he came or
what he had been. He was supposed to have been born a German Jew; and
certain ladies said that they could distinguish in his tongue the
slightest possible foreign accent. Nevertheless it was conceded to him
that he knew England as only an Englishman can know it. During the
last year or two he had 'come up' as the phrase goes, and had come up
very thoroughly. He had been blackballed at three or four clubs, but
had effected an entrance at two or three others, and had learned a
manner of speaking of those which had rejected him calculated to leave
on the minds of hearers a conviction that the societies in question
were antiquated, imbecile, and moribund. He was never weary of
implying that not to know Mr Alf, not to be on good terms with Mr Alf,
not to understand that let Mr Alf have been born where he might and
how he might he was always to be recognized as a desirable
acquaintance, was to be altogether out in the dark. And that which he
so constantly asserted, or implied, men and women around him began at
last to believe,--and Mr Alf became an acknowledged something in the
different worlds of politics, letters, and fashion.

He was a good-looking man, about forty years old, but carrying himself
as though he was much younger, spare, below the middle height, with
dark brown hair which would have shown a tinge of grey but for the
dyer's art, with well-cut features, with a smile constantly on his
mouth the pleasantness of which was always belied by the sharp
severity of his eyes. He dressed with the utmost simplicity, but also
with the utmost care. He was unmarried, had a small house of his own
close to Berkeley Square at which he gave remarkable dinner parties,
kept four or five hunters in Northamptonshire, and was reputed to earn
L6,000 a year out of the 'Evening Pulpit' and to spend abo