lla,
observing with secret delight that her cousin's head was raised, and
that the pen with which she was writing had stopped in its rapid gallop.

"Ah! so one thinks of a good many fellows," answered the Guardsman;
"or, at least, you ladies do, who don't look at a man's ins and outs,
and the fifty hundred things there are to bother him. Lots of
people--householders, and all that sort of thing--that one would fancy
worth no end, go smash when nobody's expecting it."

"And Mr. Falkenstein really is embarrassed?"

The Guardsman laughed outright. "That is a mild term, Miss Cashranger. I
heard down at Windsor yesterday, from a man that knows his family very
well, that if he don't pay his debts this week, Amadeus Levi will arrest
him. I dare say he will. Jews do when they can't bleed you any longer,
and think your family will come down handsomely. But they say the old
Count won't give Falkenstein a rap, so most likely he'll cut the
country."

That afternoon, on his return from the Deeds and Chronicles Office,
whose slow red-tapeism ill suited his impatient and vigorous intellect,
Waldemar sat down deliberately to investigate his affairs. It was true
that Amadeus Levi's patience was waning fast; his debts of honor had put
him deep in that worthy's books, and Falkenstein, as he sat in his
lodgings, with the August sun streaming full on the relentless figures
that showed him, with cruel mathematical ruthlessness, that he was fast
chained in the Golden Fetters of debt, leaned his head upon his arms
with the bitter despair of a man whose own hand has blotted his past and
ruined his future.

The turning of the handle of his door roused him from his reverie. He
looked up quickly.

"A lady wants to speak to you, sir," said the servant who waited on him.

"What name?"

"She'd rather not give it, sir."

"Very well," said Falkenstein, consigning all women to the devil; "show
her up."

Resigning himself to his fate, he rose, leaning his hand on the arm of
the chair. He started involuntarily as the door opened again.

"Valerie!"

She looked up at him half hesitatingly. "Count Waldemar, don't be angry
with me----"

"Angry! no, Heaven knows; but----"

Her face and her voice were fast thawing his chill reserve, and he
stopped abruptly.

"You wonder why I have come here," Valerie went on singularly shyly for
her, "but--but I heard that you--you have much to trouble you just now.
Is it true?"

"True enough, Heaven knows