ourse, with your poor cousins; you are delighted
to have them drop in to dinner, and liberal enough with the claret
when they do; but when the magnate comes, there is a magnum of
champagne, and an extra lamp in the drawing-room, and--I blush to
write it--a far more agreeable hostess at the head of the table. Dives
is such good company, you see. And speaking for my own sex, I defy any
honest fellow to lay his hand upon his waistcoat and swear that it
doesn't give him a distinct thrill of pleasure to be seen in public
with a millionaire. Daily we truckle in the Eagle's shadow--the shadow
that lay so heavily across Selwoode. With the Eagle himself and with
the Eagle's work in the world--the grim, implacable, ruthless work
that hourly he goes about--our little comedy has naught to do;
Schlemihl-like, we deal but in shadows. Even the shadow of the Eagle
is a terrible thing--a shadow that, as Felix Kennaston has told you,
chills faith, and charity, and independence, and kindliness, and
truth, and--alas--even common honesty.

But this is both cynical and digressive.

XXXI

Dr. Jeal, better than his word, had Billy Woods out of bed in five
days. To Billy they were very long and very dreary days, and to
Margaret very long and penitential ones. But Colonel Hugonin enjoyed
them thoroughly; for, as he feelingly and frequently observed, it is
an immense consolation to any man to reflect that his home no longer
contains "more damn' foolishness to the square inch than any other
house in the United States."

On all sides they sought for Cock-eye Flinks. But they never found
him, and to this day they have never found him. The Fates having
played their pawn, swept it from the board, and Cock-eye Flinks
disappeared in Clotho's capacious pocket.

All this time the young people saw nothing of one another. On this
point Jeal was adamantean.

"In a sick-room," he vehemently declared, "a woman is well enough, but
_the_ woman is the devil and all. I've told that young man plainly,
sir, that he doesn't see your daughter till he gets well--and, by
George, sir, he'll get well now just in order to see her. Nature is
the only doctor who ever cures anybody, Colonel; we humans, for
all our pill-boxes and lancets, can only prompt her--and devilish
demoralising advice we generally give her, too," he added, with a
chuckle.

"Peggy!"

This was the first observation of Mr. Woods when he came to his
senses. He swore feebly when Peggy was den