e paid for it to-morrow. Screened from
opportunity, fenced in by education, position, and society, you cannot
know how impossible it is to a man, whose very energies and strength
become his tempters, to put a check upon himself in the vortex of
pleasure round him----"

"Yes," interrupted Valerie, "I can. Feeling for you, I can sympathise in
all things with you. Had I been a man, I should have done as you have
done, drunk the ambrosia without heeding its cost. Go on--I love to hear
you speak of yourself; and I know your real nature, Count Waldemar, into
whatever errors or hasty acts repented of in cooler moments the hot
spirit of your race may have led you."

Falkenstein was pleased, despite himself, half amused, half saddened. He
turned it off with a laugh. "By Heaven, I wish they had made a brewer of
me--I might now be as rich and free from care as your uncle."

"You a brewer!" cried Valerie. Her father, a poor gentleman, had left
her his aristocratic leanings. "What an absurd idea! All the old
Falkensteins would come out of their crypts, and chanceries, and
cloisters, to see the coronet surmounting the beer vats!"

He smiled at her vehemence. "The coronet! I had better have full pockets
than empty titles."

"For shame!" cried Valerie. "Yes, bark at him, Spit dear; he is telling
stories. You do not mean it; you know you are proud of your glorious
name. Who would not rather be a Falkenstein on a hundred a year, than a
Cashranger on a thousand?"

"I wouldn't," said Waldemar, wilfully. "If I had money, I could find
oblivion for my past, and hope for my future. If I had money, what loads
of friends would open their purses for me to borrow the money they'd
know I did not need. As it is, if I except poor Tom Bevan, who's as hard
up as I am, and who's a good-hearted, single-minded fellow, and likes
me, I believe I haven't a friend. Godolphin welcomes me as a companion,
a bon vivant, a good card player; but if he heard I was in the Queen's
Bench, or had shot myself, he'd say, 'Poor devil! I am not surprised,'
as he lighted his pipe and forgot me a second after. So they would all.
I don't blame them."

"But I do," cried Valerie, her cheeks burning; "they are wicked and
heartless, and I hate them all. Oh! Count Waldemar, I would not do so. I
would not desert you if all the world did!"

He smiled: he was accustomed to her passionate ebullitions. "Poor child,
I believe you would be truer than the rest," he muttered, half