‘You evidently sent him over to me, then, on a very meagre knowledge of the man,’ said his lordship rebukingly.
‘I believe, my lord, I said at the time that I had by me a clever fellow, who wrote a good hand, could copy correctly, and was sufficient of a gentleman in his manners to make intercourse with him easy, and not disagreeable.’
‘A very guarded recommendation,’ said Lady Maude, with a smile.
‘Was it not, Maude?’ continued he, his eyes flashing with triumphant insolence.
‘I found he could do more than copy a despatch—I found he could write one. He replied to an article in the Edinburgh on Turkey, and I saw him write it as I did not know there was another man but myself in England could have done.’
‘Perhaps your lordship had talked over the subject in his presence, or with him?’
‘And if I had, sir? and if all his knowledge on a complex question was such as he could carry away from a random conversation, what a gifted dog he must be to sift the wheat from the chaff—to strip a question of what were mere accidental elements, and to test a difficulty by its real qualities. Atlee is a clever fellow, an able fellow, I assure you. That very telegram before us is a proof how he can deal with a matter on which instruction would be impossible.’
‘Indeed, my lord!’ said Walpole, with well-assumed innocence.
‘I am right glad to know he is coming home. He must demolish that writer in the Revue des Deux Mondes at once—some unprincipled French blackguard, who has been put up to attack me by Thouvenel!’
Would it have appeased his lordship’s wrath to know that the writer of this defamatory article was no other than Joe Atlee himself, and that the reply which was to ‘demolish it’ was more than half-written in his desk at that moment?