This was what portionless Beauty had in her mind when she smiled on Mr. Lobyer. Rich as he really was, the amount of his riches was doubled and trebled by the tongue of rumour. And there is really something interesting in boundless wealth, for its own sake. It is a kind of power; and there seems to be some slavish attribute inherent in the breast of man, which prompts him to fawn upon every species of power, from the physical force of a Ben Caunt to the intellectual supremacy of a Voltaire. A flavour of Monte Christo hovered about the person of Thomas Lobyer; and though he had never been known to say any thing worth listening to, or to do any thing worth recording, he was interesting nevertheless. The men who had borrowed money from him, or who thought they might some day have occasion to borrow money of him, said that there was "a stamp of power about the fellow, you know;" and there was "something racy even in his cubbishness, you know, for it isn't every fellow would have the pluck to be such a thoroughbred cub." There were people who called Mr. Lobyer generous; and there always will be people who will call the giver of sumptuous dinners a noble and generous creature. The man who keeps a drag for his own pleasure, and allows his friends to ride upon the roof of it, is likely to be considered more or less their patron and benefactor, though their companionship is as indispensable to his triumph as the slaves who attend the chariot-wheels of an emperor are necessary to complete the glory of their master. Mr. Lobyer was as generous as the man who never stints the cost of his own pleasure; as mean as the man who grudges the outlay of a sixpence that is not spent for his own gratification. This was the individual who, after inspiring alternate hope and despair in unnumbered breasts by the fickleness of his clumsy attentions, succumbed at last to the piquant charm of Florence Crawford's bright hair and tiny _retrouseé_ nose. She was insolent to him, and her insolence charmed him, for it surprised him, and stirred the dull stagnation of his brain with a sensation that was like pleasure. She laughed at him; and he, so keen in his perception of the weaknesses of better men than himself, was weak enough to think that she alone, of all the women he knew, was uninfluenced by any consideration of his wealth. "The girls I meet make as much of me as if I were a sultan, and seem to be waiting for me to throw my handkerchief amongst 'em," said Mr. Lobyer. "I like that painter-fellow's girl, because she laughs in my face, and treats me as if I were a government clerk with a hundred and fifty pounds a-year. That's the sort of girl I call jolly."