“Why?” scoffed Horace. “If learned societies want hints about the commercialism of the Press, the traffic in brains, then pa’s the man of whom to ask advice--but the Dignity of Letters! Good God!... An English newspaper should look like a gentleman’s property. The _Times_ is a journal that ought to be in every gentleman’s waste-paper basket. It’s always wrong--but it is magnificently wrong. It is consistent. To vote at the polls on the advice of the _Times_ is almost to make a virtue of vice. To vote against it is to come near to statesmanship and is the first principle of political honour. But this newspaper of the father’s is sometimes right, only in such bad taste. He has taken the whole look of distinction from the daily broadsheet.... He has vulgarized the printed page. The very print cries out against him. He has debased the manners of journalism until they are as coarse as the traffic in manures, as ignoble as money-lending, as truthful as a company-promoter’s prospectus, as ponderous in wit and humour as an American advertisement, its political, artistic, social and all other ideals as high as the imagination of shop-walkers. He has even vulgarized the word Empire. The people whom he employs but scrape a living, and they therefore give of their worst--the consequence is the employment of illiterate and unscrupulous cads in what ought to be one of the noblest and most accomplished and most sacred of callings, the enlightenment of the nation.... Tshah! in his hands the magazine has become a thing of shame--filled with illustrations that are a public misfortune.... No. My father is a millionaire. He has grown rich--that is all. Pa is a very good fellow; but he don’t know anything about the Dignity of Letters. I must go home. This thing cannot be done--it cannot be done.” Noll, finding Horace taken up with his own affairs, felt shy of telling him his trouble; and it was borne in upon him sadly enough that his friend was leaving him, and had to be about his own business--far away from him at the very time he most wanted his sympathy. An overwhelming sense of loneliness came upon him, and the silence was profound. The melancholy sense of coming departure--of the breaking up of old pleasant associations, of the passing out from their midst of a congenial and blithe companion and a happy face--set them all brooding. It was abundantly clear that Horace Malahide was being packed; for the valet, who had always before been hidden, though never far away, could now be heard in the next room brushing clothes and buzzing at the business. “Oh,” said Horace, rousing--“by the way, you fellows will want mourning for my feast of departure to-morrow!” He turned towards the door beneath which gleamed a yellow streak of candle-light: “Jonkin!” he called.