Martin turned round, and fixing his eyes on him, scanned him from head to foot with a gaze of such intense insolence as no words could have equalled. For a while the Jew bore it admirably; but these efforts, after all, are only like the brief intervals a man can live under water, and where the initiated beats the inexperienced only by a matter of seconds. As Martin continued his stare, Merl's cheek tingled, grew red, and finally his whole face and forehead became scarlet. With an instinct like that of a surgeon who feels he has gone deep enough with his knife, Martin resumed his walk along the room without uttering a word. Merl opened the newspaper, and affected to read; his hand, however, trembled, and his eyes wandered listlessly over the columns, and then furtively were turned towards Martin as he paced the chamber in silence. “Do you think you can manage that little matter for me, Captain?” said he at last, and in a voice attuned to its very humblest key. “What little matter? Those two bills do you mean?” said Martin, suddenly. “Not at all. I 'm not the least pressed for cash. I alluded to the Club; you promised you 'd put me up, and get one of your popular friends to second me.” “I remember,” said Martin, evidently relieved from a momentary terror. “Lord Claude Willoughby or Sir Spencer Cavendish would be the men if we could find them.” “Lord Claude, I perceive, is here; the paper mentions his name in the dinner company at the Embassy yesterday.” “Do you know him?” asked Martin, with an air of innocence that Merl well comprehended as insult. “No. We 've met,--I think we 've played together; I remember once at Baden--” “Lord Claude Willoughby, sir,” said a servant, entering with a card, “desires to know if you 're at home?” “And won't be denied if you are not,” said his Lordship, entering at the same instant, and saluting Martin with great cordiality. CHAPTER II. MR. MERL The French have invented a slang word for a quality that deserves a more recognized epithet, and by the expression _chic_ have designated a certain property by which objects assert their undoubted superiority over all their counterfeits. Thus, your coat from Nugee's, your carriage from Leader's, your bracelet from Storr's, and your bonnet from Madame Palmyre, have all their own peculiar _chic_, or, in other words, possess a certain invisible, indescribable essence that stamps them as the best of their kind, with an excellence unattainable by imitation, and a charm all their own! Of all the products in which this magical property insinuates itself, there is not one to which it contributes so much as the man of fashion. He is the very type of _chic_. To describe him you are driven to a catalogue of negatives, and you only arrive at anything like a resemblance by an enumeration of the different things he is not.