ocial ambitions. Yet, if I show fight, he will break me! Saving the
prospect--with a hale and hearty uncle intervening, and one of the best;
may he live to be a hundred!--of the title, and all that goes with it,
what have I to offer you, Mary? I am a man sailing under false colours.
Practically, I am a salaried servant of Rohscheimer's. I don't actually
draw my salary; but in recognition of my services in popularising his
wife's entertainments, he keeps the vultures at bay! Bah! I despise
myself!"

Mary looked up to him, tenderly reproachful.

"You silly boy!" she said. "There is nothing dishonourable in what you
do!"

"Possibly not. But how would your father like to know of my position."

She lowered her eyes again.

"Is my father indebted to Julius Rohscheimer in any way, Dick?" she
asked suddenly.

Haredale laughed nervously.

"Rohscheimer does not honour me with the whole of his confidence in
financial matters," he replied. "It is a question Adeler would be better
able to answer."

"Mr. Adeler, yes. What a singular man! Do you know, Dick, in spite of
father's ideas respecting our old English aristocracy, I have sometimes
felt, in Mr. Adeler's presence, that he, though a Jew, was a thousand
times more of an aristocrat than I?"

Haredale glanced at her oddly.

"I have at times been conscious of a similar feeling!" he said. "No
doubt one's instincts are true enough. Adeler's pedigree conceivably may
go back to Jewish nobles who entertained monarchs in their marble
palaces when the Eversheds and Haredales considered several streaks of
red ochre an adequate costume for the most important functions."

He laughed boyishly at his own words.

"Oh, Dick!" said Mary. "How absurd of you. It is impossible to imagine
an Evershed in such a condition. But yet, you are right. How singular
that most people should overlook so obvious a fact; that there is a
Jewish aristocracy, possibly one of the most ancient in the world."

"The Jews are an Eastern people," replied Haredale. "That is the fact
which is generally overlooked. They are, excepting one, the most
remarkable people in the modern world."

"Do you know," said the girl, unconsciously lowering her voice, "I have
sometimes thought that Severac Bablon was in some way connected----"

"Yes?"

"With the ancient history of the Jews!"

"What do you mean exactly?"

"I can hardly explain. But at the Rohscheimers, on the night of the
ball, Severac Bablon was masked