"Ability, my lad! He's got the brains! Do you know, Louisa, it was damn foolishness of us ever to persuade that boy to go on the stage? He was meant for what he is--we'd no right to divert his natural bent. He's in the proper groove because his tendency was too strong for us. But we were wrong--I say we did very wrong! By George! he might never have made more than a couple of hundred a week among greasy opera-singers all his life. What a thing!" By dint of many midnight conferences with Louisa, he had almost succeeded in believing that he meant part of what he said. "Are his prospects so very wonderful, then?" asked Cynthia, surprised. "What is it he _is_ doing? It is only a sort of clerkship, isn't it?" "A clerkship?" shrieked her mother. "How can you talk such ridic'lous nonsense? A clerkship? Absurd! He's McCullough's right hand--quite his right hand! McCullough says he would be worth twice as much as he is to-day if he had met Cæsar five years ago. He told your papa so last week--didn't he, Sam?" "He did," said the jobber. But there was less conviction in his tone. This was new, and he hadn't taught himself to try to credit it yet. "He told your papa that Cæsar's power of--er--of gripping a subject was immense; he had never met anything like it. He consults him in everything; he doesn't take a step without asking Cæsar's opinion first; I don't suppose a young man ever had such an extraordinary position before. Clerkship? Ho, you don't know what you're talking about!" Kent gave the conversation a twist by inquiring Miss Wix's number, as he and Cynthia would have to pay her a visit; and, on searching for her address, Mrs. Walford discovered, with much surprise, that she was not in Brunswick Square, after all, but that her one room was in a street leading out of it. The mistake was unimportant. Moreover, his mind was too much occupied for him really to think of making social calls on any one but Turquand. To the office of _The Outpost_ he betook himself next morning, and learnt that his friend was at Brighton until Monday. This did not look as if he had been pressed for his six pounds, but in other respects it was disappointing. Kent proceeded from _The Outpost_ to the offices of two other papers, where he left advertisements, and after that he had only to stroll back through the streets, which looked very ugly and depressing after Paris, to Ludgate Hill. Luncheon was over when he re-entered the villa, but it had not been cleared away, and he found Cynthia in the dining-room alone, reading a novel. He noted, with as agreeable surprise as she could have afforded him, that it was the copy of his own book that he had given to Mrs. Walford on their return from Dieppe. He looked at his wife kindly. "Turk's not in town," he said, helping himself to cold sirloin and salad; "gone to Brighton for a day or two. I've paid for my advertisements. Have you sent off yours yet, to try to induce a general servant to accept a situation?"