“By chance? I thought you were always meeting. Well, what does he mean? I acknowledge,” said Spears, with very conscious satire, “that a Sir Paul in our band will be an oddity. It wouldn’t be much more wonderful if it was St. Paul,” he added, with a laugh; “but one way or other I must know. And I don’t mind confessing to you,” he said, turning into the way by which Fairfax seemed to be walking, and suddenly striking him on the shoulder with an amicable but not slight blow, “that it will be a disappointment. I had rather committed the folly of setting my heart on that lad. He was the kind of thing, you know, that we mean in our class when we say a gentleman. There’s you, now, you’re a gentleman, too; but I make little account of you. You might just as well have been brought up in my shop or in trade. But there’s something about Paul, mind you--that’s where it is; he’s got that grand air, and that hot-headed way. I hate social distinctions, but he’s above them. The power of money is to me like a horrible monster, but he scorns it. Do you see what I mean? A man like me reasons it all out, and sees the harm of it, and the devilry of it, and it fires his blood. But Paul, he holds his head in the air, and treats it like the dirt below his feet. That’s fine, that takes hold of the imagination. I don’t mean to hurt your feelings, Fairfax,” said Spears, giving him another friendly tap on the shoulder, “but you’re just a careless fellow, one thing doesn’t matter more than another to you.” “Quite true. I am not offended,” said Fairfax, laughing. “You discriminate very well, Spears, as you always do.” “Yes, I suppose I have a knack that way,” said the demagogue, simply. “I shouldn’t wonder,” he added, “though it is not a subject that a man can question his daughter about, that it was just the same thing that attracted my girl.” Fairfax turned round upon him with quick surprise; he had not heard anything about Janet. “What!” he said, “has Markham----” and then paused; for Spears, though indulgent to freedom of speech, was in this one point a dangerous person to meddle with. He turned round, with all the force of his rugged features and broad shoulders, and looked the questioner in the face. “Yes,” he said, “Markham has--a fancy for my Janet. There is nothing very wonderful in that. His mother tried to persuade me that this was the entire cause of his devotion to my principles and me. But that is a way women have. They think nothing comparable to their own influence. He satisfied me as to that. Yes,” said Spears, with a softened, meditative tone, “that is the secondary motive I spoke of; and, to tell the truth, when I heard of the old fellow’s death I was sorry. I said to myself, the girl will never be able to resist the temptation of being ‘my lady.’”