"Why, the debts of the regent to his friends--those are the important things. But the other day he gave eighty thousand livres to Madame Châteauthiers, as a little present. He gave two hundred thousand livres to the Abbé Something-or-other, who asked for it, and another thousand livres to that rat Dubois. The thief D'Argenson ever counsels him to give in abundance now that he hath abundance, and the regent is ready with a vengeance with his compliance. Saint Simon, that priggish duke, has had a million given him to repay a debt his father took on for the king a generation ago. To the captain of the guard the regent gives six hundred thousand livres, for carrying the fan of the regent's forgotten wife; to the Prince Courtenay, two hundred thousand, most like because the prince said he had need of it; a pension of two hundred thousand annually to the Marquise de Bellefonte, the second such sum, because perhaps she once made eyes at him; a pension of sixty thousand livres to a three-year-old relative to the Prince de Conti, because Conti cried for it; one hundred thousand livres to Mademoiselle Haidée, because she has a consumption; and as much more to the Duchesse de Falari, because she has not a consumption. Bah! The credit of France might indeed, as my husband says, be called leaking through the slats of fans." "But, look you!" she went on, "how Mr. Law feathers his own nest. He bought lately, for a half million livres, the house of the Comte de Tesse; and on the same day, as you know, the Hôtel Mazarin. There is no limit to his buying of estates. This, so says my husband, is the great proof of his honesty. He puts his money here in France, and does not send it over seas. He seems to have no doubt, and indeed no fear, of anything." Lady Warrington paused, half for want of breath. Silence fell in the great room. A big and busy fly, deep down in the crystal _cylindre_ which sheltered a taper on a near-by table, buzzed out a droning protest. The face of Lady Catharine was averted. "You did not tell me, Lady Emily," said she, with woman's feigned indifference, "what was the name of this poor woman of the other evening." "Why, so I had forgot--and 'tis said that Mr. Law, after all, comported himself something of the gentleman. No one knows how far back the affair runs, nor how serious it was. And indeed I have seen no one who ever heard of the woman before." "And the name?" "'Twas said Mr. Law called her Mary Connynge." The big fly, deep down in the crystal cage, buzzed on audibly; and to one who heard it, the drone of the lazy wings seemed like the roars of a thousand tempests. CHAPTER X MASTER AND MAN