'But once there's a question, or an exposure by Liffey—piff!' Blair blew Beaufort Chance to the relentless winds of heaven and the popular press.
'How did he come to be so foolish?' asked Mrs. Bonfill in useless, regretful wondering.
'You'll see Liffey? Nobody else can do anything with him, of course.'
Mrs. Bonfill was an old friend of Liffey's; before she became motherly, when Liffey was a young man, and just establishing 'The Sentinel,' he had been an admirer of hers, and, in that blameless fashion about which Lady Blixworth was so flippant, she had reciprocated his liking; he was a pleasant, witty man, and they had always stretched out friendly hands across the gulf of political difference and social divergence. Liffey might do for Mrs. Bonfill what he would not for all the Estates of the Realm put together.
'I don't know how much you know or mean to say,' she began to Liffey, after cordial greetings.
'I know most of what there is to know, and I intend to say it all,' was his reply.
'How did you find out?'
'From Brown, a gentleman who lives at Clapham, and whose other name is Clarkson. Fricker's weak spot is that he's a screw; he never lets the subordinates stand in enough. So he gets given away. I pointed that out to him over the Swallow Islands business, but he won't learn from me.' Mr. Liffey spoke like an unappreciated philanthropist. The Swallow Islands affair had been what Fricker called a 'scoop'—a very big thing; but there had been some trouble afterwards.
'Say all you like about Fricker——'
'Oh, Fricker's really neither here nor there. The public are such asses that I can't seriously injure Fricker, though I can make an article out of him. But the other——'