This he felt to be a very terrible thing. A month ago it would have been incredible to him that such a thing could be. Mary Horneck had invariably shunned in society those persons--women as well as men--who had shown themselves to be wanting in modesty. She had always detested the man--he was popular enough at that period--who had allowed innuendoes to do duty for wit; and she had also detested the woman--she is popular enough now--who had laughed at and made light of the innuendoes, bordering upon impropriety, of such a man. And yet she had by her own act placed herself on a level with the least fastidious of the persons for whom she had always professed a contempt. The Duchess of Argyll and Lady Ancaster had, to be sure, shaken hands with the two actresses; but the first named at least had done so for her own ends, and had got pretty well sneered at in consequence. Mary Horneck stood in a very different position from that occupied by the Duchess. While not deficient in charity, she had declined to follow the lead of any leader of fashion in this matter, and had held aloof from the actresses. And yet he had seen her in secret conversation with a man at whom one of these same actresses had not hesitated to sneer as an impostor--a man who was clearly unacquainted with any other member of her family. What could this curious incident mean? The letters which had come from various friends congratulating him upon the success of the comedy lay unheeded by him by the side of those which had arrived--not a post had been missed--from persons who professed the most disinterested friendship for him, and were anxious to borrow from him a trifle until they also had made their success. Men whom he had rescued from starvation, from despair, from suicide, and who had, consequently, been living on him ever since, begged that he would continue his contributions on a more liberal scale now that he had in so marked a way improved his own position. But, for the first time, their letters lay unread and unanswered. (Three days actually passed before he sent his guineas flying to the deserving and the undeserving alike. That was how he contrived to get rid of the thousands of pounds which he had earned since leaving his garret.) His man servant had never before seen him so depressed as he was when he left his chambers.