Bernard Capes

“ No one, perhaps, felt this withdrawal more than the housekeeper, Mrs Bingley, with whom he had been accustomed to take his meals, and who had found him, when once her awe of his office was overcome, a most entertaining guest, full of intelligence, rich in anecdote, and deeply interested in everything appertaining to Wildshott, from its family portraits and accumulated collections to the beauty of its grounds and of the country in which it lay situated. ”

“ He waited unmoving for the other to join him, and nodded as he same up.
'It's pleasant to snatch a minute, sir' he said, 'to give to a view like this. People of my profession don't get many such.'
'I suppose not,' answered Le Sage, 'nor of a good many other professions. Proprietary views, like incomes, are very unfairly distributed, don't you think?'
'Well, that's so, no doubt; and among the wrong sort of people often enough.'
Le Sage laughed. ”

“ That's all for the prosperous folks in front.'
'You'd rather be one of them?'
'Which would you rather, sir—be a police-officer, or the owner of an estate like this? If such things were properly distributed, as you say, there'd be no need perhaps for police-officers at all. You read the papers about a case like ours here, and you see only a romance: we, whose necessity puts us behind the scenes, see only, in nine cases out of ten, the dirty mishandling of Fate. ”