The prevailing weakness of the human intellect seems to me to be exaggeration.

However, as I haven't a five-pound note in the world, or the chance of getting one, I'll wish you good morning, Captain Paget." There are people whose blood would have been turned to ice by the stony glare of indignation with which Horatio Paget regarded the man who had dared to question his probity.

But Mr.Hawkehurst had done with strong impressions long before he met the Captain; and he listened to that gentleman's freezing reproof with an admiring smile.

Out of this very unpromising beginning there arose a kind of friendship between the two men.

Horatio Paget had for some time been in need of a clever tool; and in the young man whose cool insolence rose superior to his own dignity he perceived the very individual whom he had long been seeking.