a very impeccable banker. He persisted also in
deferring to my judgment and sense with an over-emphasis called out by
his perpetual surprise at my youth. Though he had seen me many times (I
even knew his wife) he could never get over my immature age. He himself
was born about fifty years old, all complete, with his iron-grey whiskers
and his bilious eyes, which he had the habit of frequently closing during
a conversation. On one occasion he said to me. "By the by, the Marquis
of Villarel is here for a time. He inquired after you the last time he
called on me. May I let him know that you are in town?"

I didn't say anything to that. The Marquis of Villarel was the Don
Rafael of Rita's own story. What had I to do with Spanish grandees? And
for that matter what had she, the woman of all time, to do with all the
villainous or splendid disguises human dust takes upon itself? All this
was in the past, and I was acutely aware that for me there was no
present, no future, nothing but a hollow pain, a vain passion of such
magnitude that being locked up within my breast it gave me an illusion of
lonely greatness with my miserable head uplifted amongst the stars. But
when I made up my mind (which I did quickly, to be done with it) to call
on the banker's wife, almost the first thing she said to me was that the
Marquis de Villarel was "amongst us." She said it joyously. If in her
husband's room at the bank legitimism was a mere unpopulated principle,
in her salon Legitimacy was nothing but persons. "_Il m'a cause beaucoup
de vous_," she said as if there had been a joke in it of which I ought to
be proud. I slunk away from her. I couldn't believe that the grandee
had talked to her about me. I had never felt myself part of the great
Royalist enterprise. I confess that I was so indifferent to everything,
so profoundly demoralized, that having once got into that drawing-room I
hadn't the strength to get away; though I could see perfectly well my
volatile hostess going from one to another of her acquaintances in order
to tell them with a little gesture, "Look! Over there--in that corner.
That's the notorious Monsieur George." At last she herself drove me out
by coming to sit by me vivaciously and going into ecstasies over "_ce
cher_ Monsieur Mills" and that magnificent Lord X; and ultimately, with a
perfectly odious snap in the eyes and drop in the voice, dragging in the
name of Madame de Lastaola and asking me whether