"Bah! Moorpark, you leave that to me; I'm a business man, and know what's what. But, I say, it's a lark, isn't it?" "I don't understand you," said Lord Henry, who could not conceal his disgust for the contemptible little wretch before him. "Why, about those jewels. My! how fine and mad she'll be! It's about the best thing I ever knew. She won't get 'em now." Elbraham laughed till the tears ran down his cheeks, and then he wiped his eyes. "I say, Moorpark, I ought to be devilishly cut up, you know, about this; but the fact is, I'm devilish glad. I shall look nasty and make a show about being all wrong, you know, for one's credit's sake; but it ain't my fault. I couldn't help it; she had it all her own way. And the money she has spent--my!" Elbraham helped himself to some more port, while Lord Henry sat and tapped the table with his carefully cared-for nails. "I'm not going to cry over spilt milk, Moorpark, I can tell you! She's gone, and, as I said before, a good riddance!" It was a good riddance for Lord Henry Moorpark when Elbraham went, which he did at last, after stubbornly refusing either to take or to allow any steps to be taken in pursuit of Clotilde. "No," he said, after his sixth glass of port. "I won't spend the price of a Parl'y ticket on her; and I don't know as I shall bother myself about divorce proceedings. What's the good? Malpas hasn't a penny in the world, so there'd be no costs; and as to being free, that's what her ladyship would like. But, I say, Moorpark." "Yes?" "What a sell about those jewels!" He said it again as Lord Henry saw him into his carriage, and the next day he settled himself down in his sanctum with a very big cigar stuck between his lips, giving him the aspect of a very podgy swordfish that had burnt the tip of its weapon. Before him was a huge leather bill-case gorged with slips of bluish paper, every one of which, as he took it carefully out, bore a stamp in one corner, a reference to so many months after date, and was written across and signed. Many of them were endorsed with sign-manuals as well; and these slips of paper he quietly examined as he took them out of one pocket of the great case and then thrust them into another. By degrees an observer, had he been present, would have noticed that the pockets in which these slips were placed varied according to their dates, and that for the most part they were examined and replaced in the most unemotional manner; but every now and then as Elbraham took one out he laid it on the table, drew violently at his cigar, emitted a tremendous cloud of smoke, and burst into a hoarse series of chuckles. Then he rubbed his hands and laughed again in an unpleasant, silent manner, twisting about in his pivoted library chair.