e Savoy and Prince's, and Willis's Rooms, don't
you know, something really quite original, with flowers alone which must
have cost a fortune. People come to his entertainments, too--he can get
anybody he wants--from the duchesses down to the music-hall favourites,
even if he likes to get up a conventional river party, with a spread
down at that queer place of his you speak of--the House by the Lock."

"It is a queer place indeed," I echoed. "I wonder how he came by it?"

"Oh, if the stories are true, in a way as peculiar as the place itself,
therefore appropriate. It was owned, I know for a matter of fact, by an
Italian whose father was exiled, and came over here to live after '48, a
chap by the name of di Tortorelli, belonged to a good family and all
that, had the _entree_ everywhere. The son, a nice fellow except
that he was weak, loved nothing so well as baccarat. Somehow he and
Wildred got acquainted, when Wildred was little known, if at all, in
society, and the two played cards on rather a big scale at the house of
a mutual friend. Di Tortorelli had bad luck one night, lost a pot of
money, and finally, having nothing else left that was worth having,
staked the House by the Lock--very dilapidated, and in a shocking state
of repair.

"Well, that's the way Wildred got it, and there are those who do say
that after having won almost everything Tortorelli had, Wildred financed
him till his marriage with a rich American on the proviso that
Tortorelli should get him into the smart set. Those are only Wildred's
enemies, of course, for like most men of strong character he has a few,
though on the whole his generosity has made him extremely popular."

"Then he knew no one when he first appeared over the social horizon?" I
went on questioning.

Driscoll laughed. "I never heard of anyone who knew him before the day
when he first blazed forth as a social luminary about three or four
years ago. He took a house in town for the season, I remember--it was
the Duke of Torquay's--one of the finest in town, and let for a fabulous
sum. Then he and Tortorelli gave an entertainment together, somehow
securing several royalties, to say nothing of Paderewski and La Belle
Otero, and one or two other celebrities, who must each have cost him
anywhere from a thousand to two thousand pounds for the one night.

"After that, Wildred was made, of course, for the affair was a brilliant
success. By the way, that was the first time he ever met the