In fact, he began to doubt this evening whether it was not all a dream of his that Sir Simon had ever talked of being “hard up.” When he entered the noble dining-room and looked around him, it was difficult to believe otherwise. Massive silver and costly crystal sparkled and flashed under a shower of light from the antique branching chandelier; wax-lights clustered on the walls amidst solemn Rembrandt heads, and fascinating Reynoldses, and wild Salvator Rosas, and tender Claudes, and sunny Canalettos. It was not in nature that the owner of all this wealth and splendor should know what it was to be in want of money. Sir Simon, moreover, was in his element; and it would have puzzled a spectator more versed than Raymond in the complex mechanism of the human heart to believe that the brilliant host who was doing the honors of his house so delightfully had a canker gnawing at his vitals. He rattled away with the buoyant spirits of five-and-twenty; he was brimful of anecdote, and bright with repartee. He drew every one else out. This was what made him so irresistibly charming in society; it was not only that he shone himself, but he had a knack of making other people shine. He made the admiral tell stories of his seafaring life, he drew out Clide about Afghanistan, and spirited M. de la Bourbonais into a quarrel with him about the dates of the Pyramids; never flagging for a moment, never prosing, but vaulting lightly from one subject to another, and all the while leaving his guests under the impression that they were entertaining him rather than he them, and that he was admiring them a vast deal more than he admired himself. A most delightful host Sir Simon was. “Nothing cheers a man up like the sight of an old friend! Eh, De Winton?” he exclaimed, falling back in his chair, with a thumb thrust into each waistcoat pocket, and his feet stretched out to their full length under the mahogany, the picture of luxury, hospitality, and content. “Much you know about it!” grunted the admiral, filling his glass--“a man that never wanted to be cheered up in his life!” Sir Simon threw back his head and laughed. It was wine to him to be rated such a good fellow by his old college chum. They kept it up till eleven o’clock, puffing their cigars on the terrace, where the soft summer moon was shining beautifully on the fawns playing under the silver spray of the fountain. “I’ll walk home with you, Raymond,” said Sir Simon when the chime of the stable-clock reminded the count that it was time for him to go.