Like all other experiments, his showed unlooked-for features when put to a working test.  Its expected difficulties smoothed themselves away, while others, scarcely anticipated, came into prominence.  Most notable of all, the physical likeness between himself and Chilcote, the bedrock of the whole scheme, which had been counted upon to offer most danger, worked without a hitch.  He stood literally amazed before the sweeping credulity that met him on every hand.  Men who had known Chilcote from his youth, servants who had been in his employment for years, joined issue in the unquestioning acceptance.  At times the ease of the deception bewildered him; there were moments when he realized that, should circumstances force him to a declaration of the truth, he would not be believed.  Human nature prefers its own eyesight to the testimony of any man.

But in face of this astonishing success he steered a steady course.  In the first exhilaration of Fraide’s favor, in the first egotistical wish to break down Eve’s scepticism, he might possibly have plunged into the vortex of action, let it be in what direction it might; but fortunately for himself, for Chilcote, and for their scheme, he was liable to strenuous second thoughts—­those wise and necessary curbs that go further to the steadying of the universe than the universe guesses.  Sitting in the quiet of the House, on the same day that he had spoken with Eve on the Terrace, he had weighed possibilities slowly and cautiously.  Impressed to the full by the atmosphere of the place that in his eyes could never lack character, however dull its momentary business, however prosy the voice that filled it, he had sifted impulse from expedience, as only a man who has lived within himself can sift and distinguish.  And at the close of that first day his programme bad been formed.  There must be no rush, no headlong plunge, he had decided; things must work round.  It was his first expedition into the new country, and it lay with fate to say whether it would be his last.

He had been leaning back in his seat, his eyes on the ministers opposite, his arms folded in imitation of Chilcote’s most natural attitude, when this final speculation had come to him; and as it came his lips had tightened for a moment and his face become hard and cold.  It is an unpleasant thing when a man first unconsciously reckons on the weakness of another, and the look that expresses the idea is not good to see.  He had stirred uneasily; then his lips had closed again.  He was tenacious by nature, and by nature intolerant of weakness.  At the first suggestion of reckoning upon Chilcote’s lapses, his mind had drawn back in disgust; but as the thought came again the disgust had lessened.

In a week—­two weeks, perhaps—­Chilcote would reclaim his place.  Then would begin the routine of the affair.  Chilcote, fresh from indulgence and freedom, would find his obligations a thousand times more irksome than before; he would struggle for a time; then—­