All this and a great deal more he told us, not only with the utmost brilliancy and enjoyment, but with a certain vivacious candour— speaking of himself as if he were not at all his own affair, as if Skimpole were a third person, as if he knew that Skimpole had his singularities but still had his claims too, which were the general business of the community and must not be slighted. He was quite enchanting. If I felt at all confused at that early time in endeavouring to reconcile anything he said with anything I had thought about the duties and accountabilities of life (which I am far from sure of), I was confused by not exactly understanding why he was free of them. That he was free of them, I scarcely doubted; he was so very clear about it himself.
“I covet nothing,” said Mr. Skimpole in
