"No, sir; perfectly impossible; take my word for it, any transaction would be difficult between us. Good-bye, Martin; adieu, Claude." And with this brief leave-taking the peppery Sir Spencer left the room, more flushed and fussy than he had entered it.

"If you knew Sir Spencer Cavendish as long as we have known him, Mr.

Merl," said Lord Claude, in his blandest of voices, "you'd not be surprised at this little display of warmth. It is the only weakness in a very excellent fellow."

"I 'm hot, too, my Lord," said Merl, with the very slightest accentuation of the "initial H," "and he was right in saying that dealings would be difficult between us."

"You mentioned Ma.s.singbred awhile ago, Merl. Why not ask him to second you at the Club?" said Martin, rousing himself suddenly from a train of thought.

"Well, somehow, I thought that he and you did n't exactly pull together; that there was an election contest,--a kind of a squabble."

"I 'm sure that _he_ never gave you any reason to suspect a coldness between us; I know that _I_ never did," said Martin, calmly. "We are but slightly acquainted, it is true, but I should be surprised to learn that there was any ill-feeling between us."

"One's opponent at the hustings is pretty much the same thing as one's adversary at a game,--he is against you to-day, and may be your partner to-morrow; so that, putting even better motives aside, it were bad policy to treat him as an implacable enemy," said Lord Claude, with his accustomed suavity. "Besides, Mr. Merl, you know the crafty maxim of the French moralist, 'Always treat your enemies as though one day they were to become your friends.'" And with this commonplace, uttered in a tone and with a manner that gave it all the semblance of a piece of special advice, his Lordship took his hat, and, squeezing Martin's hand, moved towards the door.

"Come in here for a moment," said Martin, pushing open the door into an adjoining dressing-room, and closing it carefully after them. "So much for wanting to do a good-natured thing," cried he, peevishly. "I thought to help Cavendish to get rid of those 'screws,' and the return he makes me is to outrage this man."

"What are your dealings with him?" asked Willoughby anxiously.

"Play matters, play debts, loans, securities, post-obits, and every other blessed contrivance you can think of to swamp a man's present fortune and future prospects. I don't think he is a bad fellow; I mean, I don't suspect he 'd press heavily upon me, with any fair treatment on my part. My impression, in short, is that he'd forgive my not meeting his bill, but he 'd never get over my not inviting him to a dinner!"

"Well," said Willoughby, encouragingly, "we live in admirable times for such practices. There used to be a vulgar prejudice in favor of men that one knew, and names that the world was familiar with. It is gone by entirely; and if you only present your friend--don't wince at the t.i.tle--your friend, I say--as the rich Mr. Merl, the man who owns shares in mines, ca.n.a.ls, and collieries, whose speculations count by tens of thousands, and whose credit rises to millions, you'll never be called on to apologize for his parts of speech, or make excuse for his solecisms in good breeding."

"Will you put up his name, then, at the Club?" asked Martin, eagerly.

"It would not do for _me_ to do so."

"To be sure I will, and Ma.s.singbred shall be his seconder." And with this cheering pledge Lord Claude bade him good-bye, and left him free to return to Mr. Merl in the drawing-room. That gentleman had, however, already departed, to the no small astonishment of Martin, who now threw himself lazily down on a sofa, to ponder over his difficulties and weave all manner of impracticable schemes to meet them.

They were, indeed, very considerable embarra.s.sments. He had raised heavy sums at most exorbitant rates, and obtained money--for the play-table--by pledging valuable reversions of various kinds, for Merl somehow was the easiest of all people to deal with; one might have fancied that he lent his money only to afford himself an occasion of sympathy with the borrower, just as he professed that he merely betted "to have a little interest in the race." Whatever Martin, then, suggested in the way of security never came amiss; whether it were a farm, a mill, a quarry, or a lead mine, he accepted it at once, and, as Martin deemed, without the slightest knowledge or investigation, little suspecting that there was not a detail of his estate, nor a resource of his property, with which the wily Jew was not more familiar than himself. In fact, Mr. Merl was an astonishing instance of knowledge on every subject by which money was to be made, and he no more advanced loans upon an enc.u.mbered estate than he backed the wrong horse or bid for a copied picture. There is a species of practical information excessively difficult to describe, which is not connoisseurship, but which supplies the place of that quality, enabling him who possesses it to estimate the value of an object, without any admixture of those weakening prejudices which beset your mere man of taste. Now, Mr. Merl had no caprices about the color of the horse he backed, no more than for the winning seat at cards; he could not be warped from his true interests by any pa.s.sing whim, and whether he cheapened a Correggio or discounted a bill, he was the same calm, dispa.s.sionate calculator of the profit to come of the transaction.

Latterly, however, he had thrown out a hint to Martin that he was curious to see some of that property on which he had made such large advances; and this wish--which, according to the frame of mind he happened to be in at the moment, struck Martin as a mere caprice or a direct menace--was now the object of his gloomy reveries. We have not tracked his steps through the tortuous windings of his moneyed difficulties; it is a chapter in life wherein there is wonderfully little new to record; the Jew-lender and his a.s.sociates, the renewed bill and the sixty per cent, the non-restored acceptances flitting about the world, sold and resold as damaged articles, but always in the end falling into the hands of a "most respectable party," and proceeded on as a true debt; then, the compromises for time, for silence, for secrecy,--since these transactions are rarely, if ever, devoid of some unhappy incident that would not bear publicity; and there are invariably little notes beginning "Dear Moses," which would argue most ill-chosen intimacies. These are all old stories, and the "Times" and the "Chronicle" are full of them. There is a terrible sameness about them, too. The dupe and the villain are stock characters that never change, and the incidents are precisely alike in every case. Humble folk, who are too low for fashionable follies, wonder how the self-same artifices have always the same success, and cannot conceal their astonishment at the innocence of our young men about town; and yet the mystery is easily solved. The dupe is, in these cases, just as unprincipled as his betrayer, and their negotiation is simply a game of skill, in which Israel is not always the winner.

If we have not followed Martin's steps through these dreary labyrinths, it is because the path is a worn one; for the same reason, too, we decline to keep him company in his ponderings over them. All that his troubles had taught him was an humble imitation of the tricky natures of those he dealt with; so that he plotted and schemed and contrived, till his very head grew weary with the labor. And so we leave him.

CHAPTER III. A YOUNG d.u.c.h.eSS AND AN OLD FRIEND

Like a vast number of people who have pa.s.sed years in retirement, Lady Dorothea was marvellously disappointed with "the world" when she went back to it. It was not at all the kind of thing she remembered, or at least fancied it to be. There were not the old gradations of cla.s.s strictly defined; there was not the old veneration for rank and station; "society" was invaded by hosts of unknown people, "names one had never heard of." The great stars of fashion of her own day had long since set, and the new celebrities had never as much as heard of her. The great houses of the Faubourg were there, it is true; but with reduced households and dimly lighted salons, they were but sorry representatives of the splendor her memory had invested them with.

Now the Martins were installed in one of the finest apartments of the finest quarter in Paris. They were people of unquestionable station, they had ample means, lacked for none of the advantages which the world demands from those who seek its favors; and yet there they were, just as unknown, unvisited, and unsought after, as if they were the Joneses or the Smiths, "out" for a month's pleasuring on the Continent.

A solitary invitation to the Emba.s.sy to dinner was not followed by any other attention; and so they drove along the Boulevards and through the Bois de Boulogne, and saw some thousands of gay, bright-costumed people, all eager for pleasure, all hurrying on to some scheme of amus.e.m.e.nt or enjoyment, while they returned moodily to their handsome quarter, as much excluded from all partic.i.p.ation in what went on around them as though they were natives of Hayti.

Martin sauntered down to the reading-room, hoping vainly to fall in with some one he knew. He lounged listlessly along the bright streets, till their very glare addled him; he stared at the thousand new inventions of luxury and ease the world had discovered since he had last seen it, and then he plodded gloomily homeward, to dine and listen to her Ladyship's discontented criticism upon the tiresome place and the odious people who filled it. Paris was, indeed, a deception and a snare to them! So far from finding it cheap, the expense of living--as they lived--was considerably greater than at London. It was a city abounding in luxuries, but all costly. The details which are in England reserved for days of parade and display, were here daily habits, and these were now to be indulged in with all the gloom of solitude and isolation.

What wonder, then, if her Ladyship's temper was ruffled, and her equanimity unbalanced by such disappointments? In vain she perused the list of arrivals to find out some distinguished acquaintance; in vain she interrogated her son as to what was going on, and who were there.

The Captain only frequented the club, and could best chronicle the names that were great at whist or ill.u.s.trious at billiards.

"It surely cannot be the season here," cried she, one morning, peevishly, "for really there isn't a single person one has ever heard of at Paris."

"And yet this is a strong catalogue," cried the Captain, with a malicious twinkle in his eye. "Here are two columns of somebodies, who were present at Madame de Luygnes' last night."

"You can always fill salons, if that be all," said she, angrily.

"Yes, but not with Tour du Pins, Tavannes, Rochefoucaulds, Howards of Maiden, and Greys of Allington, besides such folk as Pahlen, Lichtenstein, Colonna, and so forth."

"How is it then, that one never sees them?" cried she, more eagerly.

"Say, rather, how is it one doesn't know them," cried Martin, "for here we are seven weeks, and, except to that gorgeous fellow in the c.o.c.ked hat at the porter's lodge, I have never exchanged a salute with a human being."

"There are just three houses, they say, in all Paris, to one or other of which one must be presented," said the Captain--"Madame de Luygnes, the d.u.c.h.esse de Cour-celles, and Madame de Mirecourt."

"That Madame de Luygnes was your old mistress, was she not, Miss Henderson?" asked Lady Dorothea, haughtily.

"Yes, my Lady," was the calm reply.

"And who are these other people?"

"The Duc de Mirecourt was married to 'Mademoiselle,' the daughter of the d.u.c.h.esse de Luygnes."

"Have you heard or seen anything of them since you came here?" asked her Ladyship.

"No, my Lady, except a hurried salute yesterday from a carriage as we drove in. I just caught sight of the d.u.c.h.esse as she waved her hand to me."

"Oh, I saw it. I returned the salutation, never suspecting it was meant for _you_. And she was your companion--your dear friend--long ago?"

"Yes, my Lady," said Kate, bending down over her work, but showing in the crimson flush that spread over her neck how the speech had touched her.

"And you used to correspond, I think?" continued her Ladyship.

"We did so, my Lady."

"And she dropped it, of course, when she married,--she had other things to think of?"

"I 'm afraid, my Lady, the lapse was on _my_ side," said Kate, scarcely repressing a smile at her own hardihood.

"_Your_ side! Do you mean to say that you so far forgot what was due to the station of the d.u.c.h.esse de Mirecourt, that you left her letter unreplied to?"

"Not exactly, my Lady."

"Then, pray, what do you mean?"

Kate paused for a second or two, and then, in a very calm and collected voice, replied,--"I told the d.u.c.h.esse, in my last letter, that I should write no more,--that my life was thrown in a wild, unfrequented region, where no incident broke the monotony, and that were I to continue our correspondence, my letters must degenerate into a mere selfish record of my own sentiments, as unprofitable to read as ungraceful to write; and so I said good-bye--or _au revoir_, at least--till other scenes might suggest other thoughts."

"A most complimentary character of our Land of the West, certainly!

I really was not aware before that Cro' Martin was regarded as an 'oubliette.'"

Kate made no answer,--a silence which seemed rather to irritate than appease her Ladyship.