is now two years since the event occurred of
which I am going to tell you. I was then in Baden. It was the height of
the season, and the city was crowded, not only with interesting
foreigners--if you will permit the unintentional sarcasm--but with a
large proportion of your own English aristocracy. Among the latter was a
certain nobleman to whom I was happily able to be of considerable
service. He was one of life's failures. In his earlier youth he had a
literary tendency which, had the Fates been propitious, might possibly
have brought him some degree of fame; his accession to the title,
however, and the wealth it carried with it, completely destroyed him.
When I met him in Baden he was as near ruined as a man of his position
could be. He had with him one daughter, a paralytic, to whom he was
devotedly attached. Had it not been for her I am convinced he would have
given up the struggle and have done what he afterward did--namely, have
made away with himself. In the hope of retrieving his fortune and of
distracting his mind he sought the assistance of the gaming-tables; but
having neither luck nor, what is equally necessary, sufficient courage,
eventually found himself face to face with ruin. It was then that I
appeared upon the scene and managed to extricate him from his dilemma.
As a token of his gratitude he made me a present of this picture, which
up to that time had been one of his most treasured possessions."

"And the man himself--what became of him?"

Pharos smiled an evil smile.

"Well, he was always unfortunate. On the self-same night that he made me
the present to which I refer he experienced another run of ill luck."

"And the result?"

"Can you not guess? He returned to his lodgings to find that his
daughter was dead, whereupon he wrote me a note, thanking me for the
assistance I had rendered him, and blew his brains out at the back of
the Kursaal."

On hearing this I recoiled a step from the picture. While it flattered
my vanity to hear that the wretched man who had lost fame, fortune, and
everything else should still have retained my work, I could not repress
a feeling of horror at the thought that in so doing he had,
unconsciously, it is true, been bringing me into connection with the
very man who I had not the least doubt had brought about his ruin. As
may be supposed, however, I said nothing to Pharos on this score. For
the time being we were flying a flag of truce, and having had one
exhibition