s, and
the rest of it. She 's no fool, so I take it; it ain't thrown away! As
regards beauty, I'll stake fifteen to ten, in hundreds, that, taking
your stand at the foot of St. James's Street on a drawing-room day,
you don't see her equal. I'm ready to put down the money to-morrow, and
that's giving three to two against the field! And is that the girl I 'm
to throw away on the Haymarket? She's a Derby filly, I tell you, Paul,
and will be first favorite one of these days."

"Faustum sit augurium!" said Classon, as he raised his glass in a
theatrical manner, and then drained it off. "Still, if I be rightly
informed, the stage is often the antechamber to the peerage. The
attractions that dazzle thousands form the centre of fascination for
some one."

"She may find her way to a coronet without that," said Davis, rudely.

"Ah, indeed!" said Paul, with a slight elevation of the eyebrow;
but though his tone invited a confidence, the other made no further
advance's.

"And now for yourself, Classon, what have you been at lately?" said
Davis, wishing to change the subject.

"Literature and the arts. I have been contributing to a London weekly,
as Crimean correspondent, with occasional letters from the gold
diggings. I have been painting portraits for a florin the head, till
I have exhausted all the celebrities of the three villages near us. My
editor has, I believe, run away, however, and supplies have ceased for
some time back."

"And what are your plans now?"

"I have some thoughts of going back to divinity. These newly invented
water-cure establishments are daily developing grander proportions; some
have got German bands, some donkeys, some pleasure-boats, others rely
upon lending libraries and laboratories; but the latest dodge is a
chaplain."

"But won't they know you, Paul? Have not the newspapers 'blown you'?"

"Ah, Davis, my dear friend," said he, with a benevolent smile, "it's far
easier to live down a bad reputation than to live up to a good one. I
'd only ask a week--one week's domestication with the company of these
places--to show I was a martyred saint. I have, so to say, a perennial
fount of goodness in my nature that has never failed me."

"I remember it at school," said Davis, dryly.

"_You_ took the clever line, Kit, 'suum cuique;' it would never have
suited _me_. _You_ were born to thrive upon men's weaknesses, mine the
part to have a vested interest in their virtues."

"If you depend upon their