"If I did not go among my flock, I could not put my finger upon the festering spot," he said. "I am a student of humanity. If Lord Avebury could devote his days to watching bees and wasps, do you wonder that I am interested in watching my fellow-creatures? A professional beauty affords a nobler scope for observation than a queen bee; a gambler on the stock exchange offers more points of interest than the industrious ant. If insects are wonderful, is not the man or the woman who hazards eternal bliss for the trivial pleasures of a London season a creature infinitely more incomprehensible? And if, while I watch and listen, I can discover where these creatures are assailable, if I can find some penetrable spot in their armour of pride, I may be able to preach to them with better chance of being heard." Father Cyprian was a conspicuous figure in that crowd of pretty women and "nice boys." Tall, even among guardsmen, he held himself like a soldier. He had a fair complexion, light brown hair, and blue eyes. A Saxon of the finest Saxon type, and coming of a family whose genealogical tree had put forth its earliest branches before the Heptarchy. It was the consciousness of superior race, perhaps, that made his fashionable flock tolerant of his stinging denunciation and unmeasured scorn of vice and folly in high places. Everything relating to him was superior. His vestments were superb, his chapel was a thing of beauty. The genius of a Bossuet would hardly have persuaded that world of the successful rich to listen to a withering analysis of its vices and pettinesses from the lips of some little Irish priest, reared in a hovel and nourished on potatoes and potheen; but it bowed the neck before Father Cyprian's good birth and grand manner.