The firm had acquired a new customer that fall; no less a personage than Lionel Derwent. This unaccountable person sold or bought his hundred shares a day, and spent half his time in the office, and pored over the ticker like any other speculator. “So much for your reformers of the world,” said young Townley to Arthur; and Arthur would have thought it strange, but that he was so rapidly learning the lesson of the world; and its first lesson is, as he fancied, that all men are alike; a lesson you will hear nowhere so frequently inculcated as in Washington and Wall Street, though we have humbly expressed our own opinion upon this theme before. Tamms said that Mr. Derwent was a damned nuisance; but he made himself most agreeable to old Mr. Townley, and would hold the old gentleman in converse by the hour whenever he happened to meet him in the office. Derwent seemed still to take great interest in Arthur too; but Charlie found him even a greater bore than Tamms. For he was also a continual visitor at the Livingstones; and Charlie worried over it. “Where a man’s treasure is, there shall his heart be also.” Charlie was growing very nervous about the state of things down-town; and it would be a little too bad to have the prize snatched from him in the moment of fruition. He had had a devilish good time in his life for the last ten years; since in fact he had got out of leading strings; and then he had looked about him with a judicious eye, and carefully selected the rich girl who seemed, on the whole, the best adapted to make him comfortable; and he meant to continue to have a good time for many years to come, please the pigs. A conservative estimate (and Townley knew something of the state of the coffers) placed the Livingstone fortune at a million and a half; there was no entangling family, and both Mamie’s parents were very old. So he sent her flowers for every evening’s amusement, whether it were concert, ball, or dinner; and called there twice a week; his flowers never came with a card, but always had a sort of trademark of their own. Good judges said that Charlie Townley was compromising himself. Not only this, but all the most recherché little parties that so experienced a fashionable could invent; just the sort of thing that made Mamie’s young friends open their eyes, with envy; club dinners, and private dances at the country clubs, and seats upon the smartest coaches and in the most unquestioned opera-boxes; and these not mere “bud” parties, but with Mrs. Malgam, Pussie De Witt, or Mrs. Gower herself as guests. Thus Townley wooed her millions with his own scarce dollars and the aid of his acquaintance and his worldly wisdom. And Gracie found that Mamie was infatuated.