at Margate, sixty if she was a
day (of course there was nothing improper), and she worshipped me.
How nicely she used to smile when she said, 'Come round here that I
may look at you!'--and her husband was quite as bad; he'd run all
over the place after me. So-and-so was quite offended because I
didn't rush to see him; he'd put me up for six months.... Servants
hate Frank; for me they'd do anything. I never was in a lodging-house
in my life that the slavey didn't fall in love with me. People
dislike me; I speak to them for five minutes, and henceforth they run
after me. I make friends everywhere.

"Those Americans wanted me to come and stay six months with them in
New York. How she did press me to come! ... The Brookes, they want me
to come and stay in the country with them; they'd give me horses to
ride, guns to shoot, and I'd get the girls besides. They looked
rather greedily at me just now. How jealous poor old Emily is of
them! She says I'd 'go to the end of the earth for them'--and would
not raise a little finger for her. Dear old Emily, she wasn't a bit
cross the other night when I wouldn't go home with her. I must go and
see her. She says she loved me--really loved me! ... She used to lie
and dream of pulling me out of burning houses. I wonder why I am
liked! How intangible, and yet how real! What a wonderful character I
would make in a novel!"

At that moment he saw Mrs. Byril in the crowd; but notwithstanding
his kind thoughts of her, he prayed she might pass without seeing
him. Perceiving Lady Helen walking with her husband and Harding, he
followed her slim figure with his eyes, remembering what Seymour's
good looks had brought him, for he envied all love, desiring to be
himself all that women desire. Then his thoughts wandered. The
decoration of the Park absorbed him--the nobility of a group of
horses, the attractiveness of some dresses; and amid all this
elegance and parade he dreamed of tragedy--of some queen blowing her
brains out for him--and he saw the fashionable dress and the blood
oozing from the temple, trickling slowly through the sand. Then Lords
Muchross and Snowdown passed, and they passed without acknowledging
him!

"Cads, cads, damn them!" His face changed expression. "I may rise to
any height, queens may fall down and worship me, but I may never undo
my birth. Not to have been born a gentleman! That is to say, of a
long line--a family with a history. Not to be able to whisper, 'I may
lose