His enemies would have said that he was still light minded,
but no longer light hearted. But in any case, the whole of the story
Horne Fisher had to tell arose out of the accident which had made
young Harry Fisher private secretary to Lord Saltoun. Hence his
later connection with the Foreign Office, which had, indeed, come to
him as a sort of legacy from his lordship when that great man was
the power behind the throne. This is not the place to say much about
Saltoun, little as was known of him and much as there was worth
knowing. England has had at least three or four such secret
statesmen. An aristocratic polity produces every now and then an
aristocrat who is also an accident, a man of intellectual
independence and insight, a Napoleon born in the purple. His vast
work was mostly invisible, and very little could be got out of him
in private life except a crusty and rather cynical sense of humor.
But it was certainly the accident of his presence at a family dinner
of the Fishers, and the unexpected opinion he expressed, which
turned what might have been a dinner-table joke into a sort of small
sensational novel.
Save for Lord Saltoun, it was a family party of Fishers, for the
only other distinguished stranger had just departed after dinner,
leaving the rest to their coffee and cigars.
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