"Much obliged for your kindness in saying that I could." "Oh, yes," he answered. "Don't mention it; I thought I'd take a rise out of you. Beaten with my own weapons. Lost the adorable Polly for my pains----" "I hope you have nothing to say against Miss O'Flaherty," I said, getting angry. "If you have it had better not be said in my presence." "Hulloa! 'pistols for two, coffee for one,'" said Mervin, laughing. "All I have to say, my dear fellow, is that for a woman who is not a coquette, and who is one of the truest women alive, she is the greatest man-slayer I have ever known. What I could never make out is how she could belong to such a clan as the O'Flahertys of O'Flaherty Hall (as we called it), Bedford Square. But 'dull Boetia gave a Pindar birth,' and I suppose that it was on the same principle that nature permitted the late Michael O'Flaherty, of money-lending renown, to be the sire of a woman who would be an empress if rank were the reward of merit and not accident." "So her father was a money-lender," I said, helping myself to some cutlets. "A prince among money-lenders," rejoined Mervin, "a man whose rate per cent. rose in a very direct proportion to your necessities, and who never deserted his prey while there was a drop of blood left in its carcass. But, 'rest his sowl,' he's been dead these last three years." "But O'Flaherty is not a Jewish name," I remarked. "Jewish name be hanged!" said Mervin. "Does it follow that if a man is a money-lender he must also be a Jew? That's the way that one generation goes on repeating the folly of another. Because the Jews were the bankers of the world at a time when, owing to the ignorance of our thieving and bloodthirsty ancestors, banker and money-lender were synonymous, every man who is a money-lender is at once set down as a Jew. No, he was not a Jew, but an Irishman; and let me tell you that in London, at least, for every one Jew there are a dozen gentiles who are money-lenders, and that whereas the Jew is generally a fairly straight man of business, the gentile is generally an unmitigated scamp. The Jew means business. You can rely on his word; as a rule, he lends his own money, and his rate of interest depends on the security you have to offer; for there is a perfectly open market, and Jews are just as ready as gentiles to lend at bank rate when the necessary security is forthcoming. The gentile money-lender, on the other hand, is generally a man whose only idea of business is to lie like Ananias; and very often he is not a _bona-fide_ money-lender at all, but a middle-man, with whom you are probably wasting your time." "Was Mr. O'Flaherty one of this class?"