“I 'll not hear of it! That girl has cost me very little short of ten thousand pounds,--ay, ten thousand pounds,--schooling, masters, and the rest of it. She 's no fool, so I take it; it ain't thrown away! As regards beauty, I'll stake fifteen to ten, in hundreds, that, taking your stand at the foot of St. James's Street on a drawing-room day, you don't see her equal. I'm ready to put down the money to-morrow, and that's giving three to two against the field! And is that the girl I 'm to throw away on the Haymarket? She's a Derby filly, I tell you, Paul, and will be first favorite one of these days.” “Faustum sit augurium!” said Classon, as he raised his glass in a theatrical manner, and then drained it off. “Still, if I be rightly informed, the stage is often the antechamber to the peerage. The attractions that dazzle thousands form the centre of fascination for some one.” “She may find her way to a coronet without that,” said Davis, rudely. “Ah, indeed!” said Paul, with a slight elevation of the eyebrow; but though his tone invited a confidence, the other made no further advance's. “And now for yourself, Classon, what have you been at lately?” said Davis, wishing to change the subject. “Literature and the arts. I have been contributing to a London weekly, as Crimean correspondent, with occasional letters from the gold diggings. I have been painting portraits for a florin the head, till I have exhausted all the celebrities of the three villages near us. My editor has, I believe, run away, however, and supplies have ceased for some time back.” “And what are your plans now?” “I have some thoughts of going back to divinity. These newly invented water-cure establishments are daily developing grander proportions; some have got German bands, some donkeys, some pleasure-boats, others rely upon lending libraries and laboratories; but the latest dodge is a chaplain.” “But won't they know you, Paul? Have not the newspapers 'blown you'?” “Ah, Davis, my dear friend,” said he, with a benevolent smile, “it's far easier to live down a bad reputation than to live up to a good one. I 'd only ask a week--one week's domestication with the company of these places--to show I was a martyred saint. I have, so to say, a perennial fount of goodness in my nature that has never failed me.” “I remember it at school,” said Davis, dryly. “_You_ took the clever line, Kit, 'suum cuique;' it would never have suited _me_. _You_ were born to thrive upon men's weaknesses, mine the part to have a vested interest in their virtues.” “If you depend upon their virtues for a subsistence, I 'm not surprised to see you out at elbows,” said Davis, roughly. “Not so, Kit,--not so,” said the other, blandly, in rebuke. “There 's a great deal of weak good-nature always floating about life. The world is full of fellows with 'Pray take me in' written upon them.” “I can only vouch for it very few have come in my way,” said Davis, with a harsh laugh.