"Well, you can give it away," shrieked Gordon. "They’ll make you a duke if you only give away enough. If there wathn’t a faint thuspithion of Jewish blood in me, I’d be a baron now at leathth. Give it away to hospithalths, build a lunatic asylum, finanth your party. And if that don’t thucktheed, go into beer or biscuits, and you’ll be made anything you like." "If they would make me thirty, I’d do it," said Bradstock. "Thirty dukes?" asked Gordon, in bewilderment. "Thirty years old," said Bradstock. [Illustration: LEOPOLD NORFOLK GORDON. Some said his real name was Isaac Levi] Gordon advanced on him and took him by a button. "My lord," he said, solemnly, "money ith youth and strength and everything except Lady Penelope. If you had a million, you’d feel twenty-five. When I had a measly hundred thousand, I was thin and always going to doctors. When I got two, I got fatter and gave ’em up. Now I’m worth two millionth." But Bradstock said, brutally: "No, Mr. Gordon, I don’t want money, and I don’t want you to marry Lady Penelope. If I had a million, I’d rather lose it than see her do so." "Did you tell her that?" asked Gordon. "I did." "I’m damned glad," said Gordon. "If you want a cat to go one way, pull its tail the other." "Tut, tut," said Bradstock, and Gordon went away sorrowfully, for he had great riches, and saw no good in them without Pen. Bradstock had to interview all the lovers one after one. They came to implore his vote and interest. He saw Rivaulx, whose great desire was to look like an Englishman and act like one. Rivaulx adopted a stony calm, which sat upon him like a title on a Jew, but did not stick so tight. He ended a talk which began most conventionally in a wild and impassioned waltz around Bradstock’s room, with despair for a partner. He tore at his hair, but, having had it clipped till it was like a shaved blacking-brush, he could not get hold of it. "I must wed her," he howled. "I told _maman_ so, or I shall perish. I will become an Englishman. _Mon Dieu_, I am sad. I am fearfully mournful. I weep exceedingly. Have I not done all? I have eaten largely in public with Mr. Gordon. I have bought his shares and have sold them, but in my heart I cannot. When I return to Paris, I shall fight duels because I have written for Dreyfus with tears in my eye and my tongue in my cheek for sorrow. Where is she, Lord Bradstock? Tell me where she is? I will go to her and say I have done all and can no more!" De Vere tackled him, too. "My dear chap," said Bradstock, "I don’t know her mind." "She knows her own," said De Vere, with much bitterness, "and so does that boy Bob. I bought a bulldog of him, because she said she thought one would do me good. I don’t know why, and now Bob sells me dogs by telegram, and I daren’t refuse ’em." "Great Scott!" said his host; "but why?"