Mr. Lowther looked down upon the sleeper with the most benign expression. He had no dislike whatever to the simple Cornishman; he had only--his own plans. “These fellows who come suddenly into a large fortune are sure to kill themselves before they have done spending it,” he murmured, complacently. “Jervois,” he said, as he went out, “you won’t forget your master’s engagement. He’d better drive up to my place in the mail phaeton.” Mr. Lowther’s “place” was the same lodging which he had taken for himself when he first returned to England. He was an adventurer; but he was not a vulgar adventurer, and in all his dealings with Francis Tredethlyn he had not sponged upon that gentleman’s purse for so much as a five-pound note. He had his plans; but they were not the plans of a man who lives from hand to mouth. He won a good deal of his friend’s money; but he never cheated Francis out of a sixpence. His sole advantage was that which must always accompany skill and experience as opposed to ignorance and inexperience. In the meanwhile, Harcourt Lowther lived as best he might on his winnings and a small allowance made him by his mother. The Lowthers were great people in their way, and Harcourt had admission to some of the best houses in London. He was very well received in that circle in which Maude Tredethlyn had taken her place, and contrived somehow or other to be present for an hour or so at almost all of the parties in which she appeared; though to break away from the haunts of Bohemianism to drop into politer life, and then return to Bohemia in the same evening, was almost as difficult as a harlequin’s jump in a pantomime. Harcourt Lowther did this, however, and did it very often; and Maude Tredethlyn, enjoying all the privileges of a matron, found herself sometimes standing amongst the statues and exotics on a crowded staircase in Tyburnia, talking with Harcourt Lowther almost as familiarly as they had talked in the old summer evenings by the quiet river.