by the mustache and the enormous
square beard. His face was colorless, almost as white as hair and beard;
there seemed to be no shadow or tint anywhere except the cavernous
recesses from which the man's eyes gleamed and sparkled. Altogether he
was certainly "a quaint old beggar."

He had, during the day and evening, a good many visitors, for the old
gentleman's mind was as alert as it ever had been, and important men
thought him worth consulting. The names which the admirable valet Peters
announced from time to time were names which meant a great deal in the
official and diplomatic world of the day. But if old David felt
flattered over the unusual fashion in which the great of the earth
continued to come to him, he never betrayed it. Indeed, it is quite
probable that this view of the situation never once occurred to him. He
had been thrown with the great of the earth for more than half a
century, and he had learned to take it as a matter of course.

On her return from the Marquise de Saulnes' dinner-party, Miss Benham
went at once to her grandfather's wing of the house, which had its own
street entrance, and knocked lightly at his door. She asked the
admirable Peters, who opened to her, "Is he awake?" and being assured
that he was, went into the vast chamber, dropping her cloak on a chair
as she entered.

David Stewart was sitting up in his monumental bed behind a sort of
invalid's table which stretched across his knees without touching them.
He wore over his night-clothes a Chinese mandarin's jacket of old red
satin, wadded with down, and very gorgeously embroidered with the cloud
and bat designs, and with large round panels of the imperial five-clawed
dragon in gold. He had a number of these jackets--they seemed to be his
one vanity in things external--and they were so made that they could be
slipped about him without disturbing him in his bed, since they hung
down only to the waist or thereabouts. They kept the upper part of his
body, which was not covered by the bedclothes, warm, and they certainly
made him a very impressive figure.

He said: "Ah, Helen! Come in! Come in! Sit down on the bed there and
tell me what you have been doing!" He pushed aside the pack of cards
which was spread out on the invalid's table before him, and with great
care counted a sum of money in francs and half-francs and nickel
twenty-five centime pieces. "I've won seven francs fifty from Peters
to-night," he said, chuckling gently. "Tha