“Yes. It’s all right, though, at last. I persuaded them, with a good deal of trouble, that the profession was rather more holy than the Church. I set forth the facts--the honour and glory--the secret diffusion and cultivation of a better taste--higher standards--a Mission--nobler æsthetics--and the income--especially the income.” “That would be a serious factor in the case.” “Yes. And I pointed out the educational side--the advance of oratory. So they came round, little by little. And I clinched the thing by offering to go back to the Bar; in which case, I told them, we should have to live at Shepherd’s Bush, in a £40 a year semi-detached, while Algernon went into the City as a clerk at fifteen shillings a week, which is more than his true value.” “Well, since it did well I congratulate you. The profession will be continued, of course?” “Of course. But I confess I was surprised at the common-sense of Algernon. He will immediately enter at the Bar: he will join me; there will henceforth be two successful lawyers in the family instead of one.” “And what about the threatened exposure?” “Algernon has gone to see the BEAST. He is to promise him that if a word or a hint is dropped, everybody shall know where he--the BEAST--buys his stories, and his poems, and his epigrams, as well as his after-dinner speeches. Algernon has fished it all out. Why, sir, the man is a Fraud--a common Fraud! He buys everything!” So with this tribute to truth and honesty the weaver of speeches for other people went away. Only the day before Leonard would have received this communication with disgust as another humiliation. The way of deception--the life of pretence--was kept open. It would have been a tearing down of more family pride. Now it was nothing. The pretence of it, the ready way in which his cousin Algernon had dropped into it, belonged to someone else--not to himself. The family honour--such as he had always regarded it and believed in it--was gone--smashed and broken up into fragments. The House of the Campaignes, like every other family, had its decaying branches; its dead branches; its off-shoots and humble branches; its branches of dishonour. There is no such thing existing as a family where men have been always Bayards and its women always beyond reproach. Upon him had fallen the blow of finding out the things concealed: the blot on the scutcheon, the ugly stories of the past: the poor relations and the unworthy relations. The discovery humiliated him at the outset: it became rapidly a thing apart from himself and outside himself. Uncle Fred might be an impostor and fraud. Very good. It mattered nothing to him. Uncle Christopher was a pretender and a humbug--what did it matter? The East-End solicitor was a person with no pretence at honour and honesty--what did it matter? They belonged to him by blood relationship; yet he was still--himself.