The reputations gained and discarded at Oxford would make a very quaint museum, could they be preserved, labelled and classified, and when plain Anthony Gyde became Sir Anthony, and succeeded to the banking business, founded by his grandfather, he left his reputation behind him at the University in more senses than one. The thing was as surprising as the bursting of a dragon fly from its sheath. It was in November that the University lost an undergraduate, noted chiefly for a handsome face, effeminacy and a taste for collecting first editions. In the following January, Lombard Street became aware of a new hand in the game of finance. As a matter of fact Oxford had let loose, without knowing it (as she sometimes does), a very great genius. The young Sir Anthony had the gift of seeing the inwardness of a thing; he had the gift of knowing what was going to appreciate; he had a nose that could scent rotten security through all the rose leaves and figments heaped upon it by the wiliest promoters of companies. He would have succeeded as a small tradesman in a country town, but he never would have made such a success as he did, with half a million of money at his back, good credit and a hand in the European treacle-pot. He was twenty-two when he succeeded to the banking business, and he was forty-four at the date of this story. Twenty years, and he had done a great deal in twenty years. He had made himself a name in finance, not so great as the name of Rothschild or Schwab, but equally as great as Hirsch. He had a house in the Avenue Malakoff, in Paris, as well as his house in London. Paris and London were the two foci of his business orbit. It is impossible for an ordinary person to estimate the power and influence that lie in the hands of a man like Sir Anthony Gyde; millions do not, of a necessity, confer power upon their possessor, except the power of spending; but a man of genius, with seven million in cash and credit at his elbow, can command events. Of the private life of this banker-millionaire, the least said the better. He was a patron of Art, he was many things besides. As a man of the world, that is to say, a man capable of fighting the world, he was all but flawless. He had one weak point, his temper. He rarely lost his temper, but when he did, he quite lost control of himself and a demon, carefully hidden at all other times, arose and spoke and acted. A terrible and familiar spirit. When under its influence the man was appalling. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CHAPTER V STANDING on Gamblesby Fell you can see Throstle Hall away to the right, its gables and the smoke of its chimneys above the tall elm trees, and the great sweep of park surrounding it.