"Your grace, I am a man old enough to be your father; something of a philosopher and a dreamer, who has let the current of this world's affairs swim by him unnoted for many years--another, more dependent on present issues, might hesitate to speak to a man of such power as yourself in the manner which I have planned to do; but I would forever lose my own self-respect, which I state honestly is of far greater value to me than any opinion which you or another may have of me, if at this time I failed to be open with you. I was an unintentional observer of the scene which just occurred between you and Mr. Carmichael--one in which, to my thinking, you showed to monstrous poor advantage." If he had denied, or stormed, or affected a hurt honor at the words, they would have but fallen in with the idea I had of him. He did none of these; but, turning, said to me openly and as one in no wise affronted: "I hate the man for the best reason on earth, Lord Stair." "And is it your way to try to kill all you hate?" "Oh, no," he answered, "it is not often necessary." I can not set down the ease with which he spoke, for it seemed to me that I was listening to some theatric person behind the foot-lights making a speech to the pit rather than to a man who was as earnest as a man could well be. "The truth at the root of the whole trouble is that Mr. Carmichael and I have the misfortune to love the same woman. "I have wanted for some time to have a private talk with you, Lord Stair," he continued. "If your time is at your command, will you do me the honor to have a bottle of wine with me at the Red Cock, where we can talk with something more of ease?" Ten minutes from that we were seated by a window of the inn, the duke on one side of a table with a bottle of his own, I on the other with a bottle of mine, while he, with a frankness impossible to a less gifted person, was dazzling me by his wisdom and his wickedness. I wish it were possible for me to put down the gesture, the grace of language, the lightness of touch, the deliberate choice of one word over another, with which this talk was flowered; but I can, at least, state that it had to me a living kind of deviltry in it that raised me out of my surroundings, as a play or great music might have done, or the clash of some great event.