ess difficult to him than to another,
and the result less embarrassing. Dear old Jones, who tells his
friends at the club of every pound that he loses or wins at the
races, who boasts of Mary's favours and mourns over Lucy's coldness
almost in public, who issues bulletins on the state of his purse, his
stomach, his stable, and his debts, could not with any amount of care
keep from us the fact that his father was an attorney's clerk, and
made his first money by discounting small bills. Everybody knows
it, and Jones, who likes popularity, grieves at the unfortunate
publicity. But Jones is relieved from a burden which would have
broken his poor shoulders, and which even Ferdinand Lopez, who is a
strong man, often finds it hard to bear without wincing.

It was admitted on all sides that Ferdinand Lopez was a "gentleman."
Johnson says that any other derivation of this difficult word than
that which causes it to signify "a man of ancestry" is whimsical.
There are many, who in defining the term for their own use, still
adhere to Johnson's dictum;--but they adhere to it with certain
unexpressed allowances for possible exceptions. The chances are very
much in favour of the well-born man, but exceptions may exist. It
was not generally believed that Ferdinand Lopez was well born;--but
he was a gentleman. And this most precious rank was acceded to
him although he was employed,--or at least had been employed,--on
business which does not of itself give such a warrant of position as
is supposed to be afforded by the bar and the church, by the military
services and by physic. He had been on the Stock Exchange, and still
in some manner, not clearly understood by his friends, did business
in the City.

At the time with which we are now concerned Ferdinand Lopez was
thirty-three years old, and as he had begun life early he had been
long before the world. It was known of him that he had been at a good
English private school, and it was reported, on the solitary evidence
of one who had there been his schoolfellow, that a rumour was current
in the school that his school bills were paid by an old gentleman
who was not related to him. Thence at the age of seventeen he had
been sent to a German University, and at the age of twenty-one
had appeared in London, in a stockbroker's office, where he was
soon known as an accomplished linguist, and as a very clever
fellow,--precocious, not given to many pleasures, apt for work, but
hardly trustworth