‘Who’s there?—­Come in!’

It was Edwards.  He looked round him as if surprised.

’I beg your pardon, sir,—­I thought you were engaged.  I didn’t know that—­that gentleman had gone.’

’He went up the chimney, as all that kind of gentlemen do.—­Why the deuce did you let him in when I told you not to?’ ’Really, sir, I don’t know.  I gave him your message, and—­he looked at me, and—­that is all I remember till I found myself standing in this room.’

Had it not been Edwards I might have suspected him of having had his palm well greased,—­but, in his case, I knew better.  It was as I thought,—­my visitor was a mesmerist of the first class; he had actually played some of his tricks, in broad daylight, on my servant, at my own front door,—­a man worth studying.  Edwards continued.

’There is someone else, sir, who wishes to see you,—­Mr Lessingham.’

‘Mr Lessingham!’ At that moment the juxtaposition seemed odd, though I daresay it was so rather in appearance than in reality.  ‘Show him in.’

Presently in came Paul.

I am free to confess,—­I have owned it before!—­that, in a sense, I admire that man,—­so long as he does not presume to thrust himself into a certain position.  He possesses physical qualities which please my eye—­speaking as a mere biologist like the suggestion conveyed by his every pose, his every movement, of a tenacious hold on life,—­of reserve force, of a repository of bone and gristle on which he can fall back at pleasure.  The fellow’s lithe and active; not hasty, yet agile; clean built, well hung,—­ the sort of man who might be relied upon to make a good recovery.  You might beat him in a sprint,—­mental or physical—­though to do that you would have to be spry!—­but in a staying race he would see you out.  I do not know that he is exactly the kind of man whom I would trust,—­unless I knew that he was on the job,—­which knowledge, in his case, would be uncommonly hard to attain.  He is too calm; too self-contained; with the knack of looking all round him even in moments of extremest peril,—­and for whatever he does he has a good excuse.  He has the reputation, both in the House and out of it, of being a man of iron nerve,—­and with some reason; yet I am not so sure.  Unless I read him wrongly his is one of those individualities which, confronted by certain eventualities, collapse,—­to rise, the moment of trial having passed, like Phoenix from her ashes.  However it might be with his adherents, he would show no trace of his disaster.

And this was the man whom Marjorie loved.  Well, she could show some cause.  He was a man of position,—­destined, probably, to rise much higher; a man of parts,—­with capacity to make the most of them; not ill-looking; with agreeable manners,—­when he chose; and he came within the lady’s definition of a gentleman, ’he always did the right thing, at the right time, in the right way.’  And yet—!  Well, I take it that we are all cads, and that we most of us are prigs; for mercy’s sake do not let us all give ourselves away.