Now he took out a bundle of papers with broken seals, and wound with a faded tape. He turned the rich important parchments over in his hands. He saw his own name on the outside of one: “Sir Gaston Robert Belward.” And there was added: “Bart.” He laughed. Well, why not complete the reproduction? He was an M. P.--why not a Baronet? He knew how it was done. There were a hundred ways. Throw himself into the arbitration question between Canada and the United States: spend ten thousand pounds of--his grandfather’s--money on the Party? His reply to himself was cynical: the game was not worth the candle. What had he got out of it all? Money? Yes: and he enjoyed that--the power that it gave--thoroughly. The rest? He knew that it did not strike as deep as it ought: the family tradition, the social scheme--the girl. “What a brute I am!” he said. “I’m never wholly of it. I either want to do as they did when George Villiers had his innings, or play the gipsy as I did so many years.” The gipsy! As he held the papers in his hand he thought as he had done last night, of the gipsy-van on Ridley Common, and of--how well he remembered her name!--of Andree. He suddenly threw his head back, and laughed. “Well, well, but it is droll! Last night, an English gentleman, an honourable member with the Treasury Bench in view; this morning an adventurer, a Romany. I itch for change. And why? Why? I have it all, yet I could pitch it away this moment for a wild night on the slope, or a nigger hunt on the Rivas. Chateau-Leoville, Goulet, and Havanas at a bob?--Jove, I thirst for a swig of raw Bourbon and the bite of a penny Mexican! Games, Gaston, games! Why the devil did little Joe worry at being made ‘move on’? I’ve got ‘move on’ in every pore: I’m the Wandering Jew. Oh, a gentleman born am I! But the Romany sweats from every inch of you, Gaston Belward! What was it that sailor on the Cyprian said of the other? ‘For every hair of him was rope-yarn, and every drop of blood Stockholm tar!’” He opened a paper. Immediately he was interested. Another; then, quickly, two more; and at last, getting to his feet with an exclamation, he held a document to the light, and read it through carefully. He was alone in the room. He calmly folded it up, put it in his pocket, placed the rest of the papers back, locked the box, and passing into the next room, gave it to the clerk. Then he went out, a curious smile on his face. He stopped presently on the pavement. “But it wouldn’t hold good, I fancy, after all these years. Yet Law is a queer business. Anyhow, I’ve got it.”