“Well,” said Mivers, languidly, “I can’t even get through the book; it is as dull as the country in November. But, as you justly say, the writer is an ‘Intellectual,’ and a clique would be anything but intellectual if it did not support its members. Review the book yourself; mind and make the dulness of it the signal proof of its merit. Say: ‘To the ordinary class of readers this exquisite work may appear less brilliant than the flippant smartness of’--any other author you like to name; ‘but to the well educated and intelligent every line is pregnant with,’ etc. By the way, when we come by and by to review the exhibition at Burlington House, there is one painter whom we must try our best to crush. I have not seen his pictures myself, but he is a new man; and our friend, who has seen him, is terribly jealous of him, and says that if the good judges do not put him down at once, the villanous taste of the public will set him up as a prodigy. A low-lived fellow too, I hear. There is the name of the man and the subject of the pictures. See to it when the time comes. Meanwhile, prepare the way for onslaught on the pictures by occasional sneers at the painter.” Here Mr. Mivers took out of his cylinder a confidential note from the jealous rival and handed it to his mild-looking _confrere_; then rising, he said, “I fear we must suspend our business till to-morrow; I expect two young cousins to breakfast.” As soon as the mild-looking man was gone, Mr. Mivers sauntered to his drawing-room window, amiably offering a lump of sugar to a canary-bird sent to him as a present the day before, and who, in the gilded cage which made part of the present, scanned him suspiciously and refused the sugar. Time had remained very gentle in its dealings with Chillingly Mivers. He scarcely looked a day older than when he was first presented to the reader on the birth of his kinsman Kenelm. He was reaping the fruit of his own sage maxims. Free from whiskers and safe in wig, there was no sign of gray, no suspicion of dye. Superiority to passion, abnegation of sorrow, indulgence of amusement, avoidance of excess, had kept away the crow’s-feet, preserved the elasticity of his frame and the unflushed clearness of his gentlemanlike complexion. The door opened, and a well-dressed valet, who had lived long enough with Mivers to grow very much like him, announced Mr. Chillingly Gordon. “Good morning,” said Mivers; “I was much pleased to see you talking so long and so familiarly with Danvers: others, of course, observed it, and it added a step to your career. It does you great good to be seen in a drawing-room talking apart with a Somebody. But may I ask if the talk itself was satisfactory?”