Mr. Philcote, whose nerves were fluttered by the ominous gloom that had so suddenly fallen upon the assembly, gave a despairing cough, and made a husky plunge at the A flat on which he should have begun the sweetest song-writer’s sweetest song; but before he had articulated his initiatory “’Tis,” a big man with a black moustache, who owed Harcourt Lowther a grudge, and had been consuming the best bits of the lobsters, and the lion’s share of the Moselle, under a mental protest, interrupted the timid singer: “Let’s have the story first, and the ‘Last Rose’ afterwards,” he said. “Fire away, Tredethlyn; your audience have supped luxuriously, and are in good humour.” “I dare say it’s a common story enough in your set, Boystock,” answered Francis; “but it isn’t a long one. It is the story of a man who was lifted one day from poverty to wealth, and found himself all at once alone in a world as strange to him as if he had been transported out of this planet into another inhabited by a different species.” “Egad,” muttered Mr. Boystock, “I wish somebody would transport me!” “Ah, it isn’t likely, old fellow, in _that_ way,” murmured his neighbour. “For some time the country-bred cub--he was country-bred, and what you would call a cub--got on well enough. He floundered into a few mistakes, and he floundered out of them, after his own ignorant fashion. I think there is a providence for such men, as there is for drunkards, and so long as they stagger along _alone_, they come to very little grief. He did a great many silly things with his money, I dare say; but I think he _once_ did a generous thing--though, God knows, in doing it, he only followed the blind impulse of his undisciplined heart as ignorantly as if he had been some blundering Newfoundland dog that pulls the mistress he loves out of the water where he sees her drowning. His wealth prospered with him, though he had cared little enough for it when it fell into his hands. By means of it he was able to save the woman he loved from a great trouble; and in her boundless gratitude for the service which he valued so lightly, she abandoned herself to the purest impulse that ever stirred a noble breast, and offered him her hand. If he had been generous or wise, he would have refused the hand which could not give him a heart. He was only--in love. Selfishly, stupidly, he seized the proffered sacrifice; too besotted in his blind passion to perceive that it was a sacrifice.” Mr. Lowther’s guests stared blankly at one another. They had not dropped their own talk to hear such stuff as this. Harcourt sat very still, with his hand always upon the knife. At the other end of the table lounged Roderick, the very picture of well-bred indifference. He felt that his brother had dropped in for it; but he had no idea of interrupting the action of the little drama by any fraternal championship. “Let them fight it out their own way,” he thought; “I like to see the white man suffer.”