"I should hardly think so. I can't fancy that he would have the pluck," said Mr. Rattler. "The Duke isn't the easiest man in the world to speak to about such a thing as that."
"It would be a monstrous thing for a man to do! But Drought's head is quite turned. You can see that."
"We never thought very much about him, you know, on our side."
"It was what your side thought about him," rejoined Roby, "that put him where he is now."
"It was the fate of accidents, Roby, which puts so many of us in our places, and arranges our work for us, and makes us little men or big men. There are other men besides Drought who have been tossed up in a blanket till they don't know whether their heads or their heels are highest."
"I quite believe in the Duke," said Mr. Roby, almost alarmed by the suggestion which his new friend had seemed to make.
"So do I, Roby. He has not the obduracy of Lord Brock, nor the ineffable manner of Mr. Mildmay, nor the brilliant intellect of Mr. Gresham."
"Nor the picturesque imagination of Mr. Daubeny," said Mr. Roby, feeling himself bound to support the character of his late chief.
"Nor his audacity," said Mr. Rattler. "But he has peculiar gifts of his own, and gifts fitted for the peculiar combination of circumstances, if he will only be content to use them. He is a just, unambitious, intelligent man, in whom after a while the country would come to have implicit confidence. But he is thin-skinned and ungenial."
"I have got into his boat," said Roby, enthusiastically, "and he will find that I shall be true to him."