“This is a strange aftermath of--I suppose--jealousy.” “Yes; one hardly sees at this stage what the girl can do.” “Awkward for Count Prosper,” Lufton declared. “He is a very good fellow. For all practical purposes an Englishman.” Which was the highest compliment the speaker felt he could pay the young diplomat; and certainly the sincerest. “You remember,” Lufton said to Bellairs, “that fellow Paul Gastineau, the K.C.?” “Gastineau? Rather. Killed in a railway accident in Spain. I know what you are going to say. Yes. He was supposed to be a great admirer of Countess Alexia.” “Oh, yes,” Greetland replied, with the superiority conferred by an acknowledged omniscience. “I don’t fancy there was much in that, though. At any rate on the lady’s side.” “Ah, no. He was a deuced clever fellow.” “Gastineau? I should think so. He had about the biggest practice at the Common Law Bar.” “Safe for the Woolsack if he hadn’t been cut off.” Lufton looked knowingly doubtful. “I don’t know,” he replied, with a contradictory head-shake. “Paul Gastineau was not altogether a _persona grata_, clever as he admittedly was. There seemed always something about the fellow that put one on one’s guard.” “Too clever, eh?” “Yes. One of those men whom even their own party is afraid of. In politics safe mediocrities are preferred to dangerous geniuses. And men of the Gastineau type are looked upon with particular suspicion. They are apt by comparison to show up the short-comings of our pet aristocratic statesmen. No; I very much doubt whether that Spanish signalman’s error really robbed England of a future Lord Chancellor.” “I dare say not,” Vaxton agreed musingly. “I am inclined to think, though, that this man Herriard, who has made such a hit in the Rullington case, will go far. His style is like, very curiously like, Gastineau’s, but without that touch of deviltry the other man often exhibited. Yes; a safer man, and a more British personality.” “Gastineau was more or less a foreigner, wasn’t he?” “Half Italian. Charlie Wryton who devilled him told me he never quite felt at his ease with the fellow. You know Wryton? Big man who got his blue at Oxford, and the last man in the world, one would think, to funk; but I really believe he was afraid, personally afraid, of Gastineau, and distinctly relieved when he was killed.” “The power of mind over matter.” “Rather the influence of unscrupulousness on mere animal courage. Gastineau’s mind and methods were deeper than Charlie could fathom. There is always a terror in the unknown.” “Countess Alexia does not seem to have been particularly happy in her lovers,” Bellairs remarked.