ess, as he did everything else about him, used to say: 'He's
a wonder of the world! How he retains his influence over all the people
he knows without ever giving one among them so much as a mutton-chop or
a glass of sherry in his house, I can't conceive. _I_ couldn't do it, I
know.' But he had ultimate plans, if not of splendour, at least of
luxury. His tastes, and perhaps some deeper feelings, pointed to the
continent, and he had purchased a little paradise on the Lake of Geneva,
where was an Eden of fruits and flowers, and wealth of marbles and
coloured canvas, and wonderful wines maturing in his cellars, and
aquaria for his fish, and ice-houses and baths, and I know not what
refinements of old Roman Villa-luxury beside--among which he meant to
pass the honoured evening of his days; with just a few more thousands,
and, as he sometimes thought, perhaps a wife. He had not quite made up
his mind; but he had come to the time when a man must forthwith accept
matrimony frankly, or, if he be wise, shake hands with bleak celibacy,
and content himself for his earthly future with monastic jollity and
solitude.

It is a maxim with charitable persons--and no more than a recognition of
a great constitutional axiom--to assume, in the absence of proof to the
contrary, that every British subject is an honest man. Now, if we had
gone to Lord Castlemallard for his character--and who more competent to
give him one--we know very well what we should have heard about
Dangerfield; and, on the other hand, we have never found him out--have
we, kind reader?--in a shabby action or unworthy thought; and,
therefore, it leaves upon our mind an unpleasant impression about that
Mr. Mervyn, who arrived in the dark, attending upon a coffin as
mysterious as himself, and now lives solitarily in the haunted house
near Ballyfermot, that the omniscient Dangerfield should follow him,
when they pass upon the road, with that peculiar stern glance of
surprise which seemed to say,--'Was ever such audacity conceived? Is the
man mad?'

But Dangerfield did not choose to talk about him--if indeed he had
anything to disclose--though the gentlemen at the club pressed him often
with questions, which however, he quietly parried, to the signal
vexation of active little Dr. Toole, who took up and dropped, in turn,
all sorts of curious theories about the young stranger. Lord
Castlemallard knew all about him, too, but his lordship was high and
huffy, and hardly ever in C