er and contemptuous thoughts about himself. His
auditors were led to imagine that his love affair was nearer his heart
than he admitted, and that he had a design on his own life. The farce of
the cream tarts began to have very much the air of a tragedy in
disguise.

"Why, is this not odd," broke out Geraldine, giving a look to Prince
Florizel, "that we three fellows should have met by the merest accident
in so large a wilderness as London, and should be so nearly in the same
condition?"

"How?" cried the young man. "Are you, too, ruined? Is this supper a
folly like my cream tarts? Has the devil brought three of his own
together for a last carouse?"

"The devil, depend upon it, can sometimes do a very gentlemanly thing,"
returned Prince Florizel; "and I am so much touched by this coincidence
that, although we are not entirely in the same case, I am going to put
an end to the disparity. Let your heroic treatment of the last cream
tarts be my example."

So saying, the Prince drew out his purse and took from it a small bundle
of bank-notes.

"You see, I was a week or so behind you, but I mean to catch you up and
come neck-and-neck into the winning-post," he continued. "This," laying
one of the notes upon the table, "will suffice for the bill. As for the
rest----"

He tossed them into the fire, and they went up the chimney in a single
blaze.

The young man tried to catch his arm, but as the table was between them
his interference came too late.

"Unhappy man," he cried, "you should not have burned them all! You
should have kept forty pounds."

"Forty pounds!" repeated the Prince. "Why, in Heaven's name, forty
pounds?"

"Why not eighty?" cried the Colonel; "for to my certain knowledge there
must have been a hundred in the bundle."

"It was only forty pounds he needed," said the young man gloomily. "But
without them there is no admission. The rule is strict. Forty pounds for
each. Accursed life, where a man cannot even die without money!"

The Prince and the Colonel exchanged glances.

"Explain yourself," said the latter. "I have still a pocket-book
tolerably well lined, and I need not say how readily I should share my
wealth with Godall. But I must know to what end: you must certainly tell
us what you mean."

The young man seemed to awaken: he looked uneasily from one to the
other, and his face flushed deeply.

"You are not fooling me?" he asked. "You are indeed ruined men like me?"

"Indeed, I am for m