by
Mr. Belcher--a paper with more enterprise than brains, more brains than
candor, and with no conscience at all; a paper which manufactured hoaxes
and vended them for news, bought and sold scandals by the sheet as if
they were country gingerbread, and damaged reputations one day for the
privilege and profit of mending them the next.

He read anew, and with marvelous amplification, the story with which the
letter of his agent had already made him familiar. This time he had
received a genuine wound, with poison upon the barb of the arrow that
had pierced him. He crushed the paper in his hand and ascended to his
room. All Wall street would see it, comment upon it, and laugh over it.
Balfour would read it and smile. New York and all the country would
gossip about it. Mrs. Dillingham would peruse it. Would it change her
attitude toward him? This was a serious matter, and it touched him to
the quick.

The good angel who had favored him all his life, and brought him safe
and sound out of every dirty difficulty of his career, was already on
his way with assistance, although he did not know it. Sometimes this
angel had assumed the form of a lie, sometimes that of a charity,
sometimes that of a palliating or deceptive circumstance; but it had
always appeared at the right moment; and this time it came in the form
of an interviewing reporter. His bell rang, and a servant appeared with
the card of "Mr. Alphonse Tibbets of 'The New York Tattler.'"

A moment before, he was cursing "The Tattler" for publishing the record
of his shame, but he knew instinctively that the way out of his scrape
had been opened to him.

"Show him up," said the proprietor at once. He had hardly time to look
into his mirror, and make sure that his hair and his toilet were all
right, before a dapper little fellow, with a professional manner, and a
portfolio under his arm, was ushered into the room. The air of easy
good-nature and good fellowship was one which Mr. Belcher could assume
at will, and this was the air that he had determined upon as a matter of
policy in dealing with a representative of "The Tattler" office. He
expected to meet a man with a guilty look, and a deprecating, fawning
smile. He was, therefore, very much surprised to find in Mr. Tibbets a
young gentleman without the slightest embarrassment in his bearing, or
the remotest consciousness that he was in the presence of a man who
might possibly have cause of serious complaint against "Th