rendon, high play,
and other concomitant pleasures. _Her_ equipages were the most perfect;
_her_ diamonds the most splendid; while _his_ dinners were as much
reputed by one class, as _her_ toilet by another.

Loans at ruinous interest; sales of property for a tithe of its value;
bills renewed at a rate that would have swamped Rothschild; purchases
made at prices proportionate to the risk of non-payment; reckless
waste everywhere; robbing solicitors, cheating tradesmen, and dishonest
servants! But why swell the list, or take trouble to show how the ruin
came? If one bad leak will cause a shipwreck, how is the craft to mount
the waves with every plank riven asunder?

If among the patriarchs who lend at usury, Broughton's credit was
beginning to ebb, in the clubs at the West End, in the betting-ring,
at Crockford's, and at Tattersall's, he was in all the splendor of his
former fame. Anderson would trust him with half his stable. Howell and
James would send him the epergne they had designed for a czar. And so
he lived. With rocks and breakers ahead, he only "carried on" the faster
and the freer.

[Illustration: 122]

Not that he knew, indeed, the extent, or anything approaching the
extent, to which his fortune was wrecked. All that he could surmise on
the subject was founded on the increased difficulty he found in raising
money,--a circumstance his pliant solicitor invariably explained by
that happy phrase, the "tightness of the money market." This completely
satisfied Sir Dudley, who, far from attributing it to his own almost
exhausted resources, laid all the blame upon some trickery of foreign
statesmen, some confounded disturbance in Ireland, something that the
Foreign Secretary had done, or would not do; and that thus the money
folk would not trust a guinea out of their fingers. In fact, it was
quite clear that to political intrigue and cabinet scheming all Sir
Dudley's difficulties might fairly be traced!

It was just at this time that the Count Radchoffsky arrived once more in
London in charge of a special mission, no longer the mere secretary of
embassy, driving about in his quiet cab, but an envoy extraordinary,
with cordons and crosses innumerable. He was exactly the kind of man
for Broughton's "set," so that he soon made his acquaintance, and was
presented by him to Lady Broughton as a most agreeable fellow, and
something very distinguished in his own country.

She received him admirably: remembered to have