For was not this world of aristocrats--there were lords and ladies and great personages whose names he had read in the newspapers--his rightful inheritance, the sphere to which he had been born?
And they did not always talk of things which he did not understand.

They received him among them with kind welcome and courtesy.

No one asked him whence he came and whither he was going.
They took him for granted, as a guest of the Winwoods.

Of course if Paul had seen himself on the way to rival the famous actor whose photograph in the window of the London Stereoscopic Company had inspired him with histrionic ambitions, he would have been at no pains to hide his profession.

But between the darling of the London stage and a seedy member of a fit-up company lies a great gulf.