If he tells me that a seat in Parliament and a seat at the board are incompatible, and that as one of the Civil Service Commissioners I am not free to stand for the borough, I will in that case, Sir Gregory, put my resignation in your hands before I publish my address.' And so they parted, each determined to do all that in him lay to thwart the wishes of the other.

Alaric was not in the least influenced by anything that Sir Gregory had said to him; he had made up his mind, and was determined to be turned from it by no arguments that his colleague could use; but nevertheless he could not but be meditative, as, walking home across the Parks, he thought of his wife and child.

It is true that he had a second trade; he was a stock-jobber as well as a Civil Service Commissioner; but he already perceived how very difficult it was to realize an income to which he could trust from that second precarious pursuit.

He had also lived in a style considerably beyond that which his official income would have enabled him to assume.

He had on the whole, he thought, done very well; but yet it would be a dreadful thing to have to trust to so precarious a livelihood.