"It makes
us ridiculous in the eyes of anybody but fools." And Jack had flared up
about it, and declared that he knew what he could afford, and she had
retorted that as for her she would not countenance it. And Jack had
attempted to pass it off lightly, at last, by saying, "Very well then,
dear, if you won't back me, I shall have to rely upon my bankers."
At any rate, neither Carmen nor Miss Tavish took him to task. They
complimented him on his taste, and Carmen made him feel that she
appreciated his independence and his courage in living the life that
suited him. She knew, indeed, how much he made in his speculations, how
much he lost at cards; she knew through him the gossip of the clubs,
and venturing herself not too far at sea, liked to watch the undertow of
fashionable life. And she liked Jack, and was not incapable of throwing
him a rope when the hour came that he was likely to be swept away by
that undertow.

It was remarked at the Union, and by the men in the Street who knew him,
that Jack was getting rapid. But no one thought the less of him for his
pace--that is, no one appeared to, for this sort of estimate of a man
is only tested by his misfortunes, when the day comes that he must seek
financial backing. In these days he was generally in an expansive mood,
and his free hand and good-humor increased his popularity. There were
those who said that there were millions of family money back of Jack,
and that he had recently come in for something handsome.

But this story did not deceive Major Fairfax, whose business it was to
know to a dot the standing of everybody in society, in which he was a
sort of oracle and privileged favorite. No one could tell exactly how
the Major lived; no one knew the rigid economy that he practiced; no one
had ever seen his small dingy chamber in a cheap lodging-house. The name
of Fairfax was as good as a letter of introduction in the metropolis,
and the Major had lived on it for years, on that and a carefully nursed
little income--an habitue of the club, and a methodical cultivator of
the art of dining out. A most agreeable man, and perhaps the wisest man
in his generation in those things about which it would be as well not to
know anything.

Seated one afternoon in his favorite corner for street observation, by
the open window, with the evening paper in his hand, in the attitude of
one expecting the usual five o'clock cocktail, he hailed Jack, who was
just coming down-stairs from