t especially like Mr. Broughton; and when Mr
Broughton first invited him to come and eat a little bit of dinner,
he had told himself with painful remorse that in his early days he
had been accustomed to eat his little bits of dinner with people of
a different kind. But there had been nothing really painful in this.
Since his marriage with a daughter of the De Courcys,--by which
marriage he had intended to climb to the highest pinnacle of social
eating and drinking,--he had gradually found himself to be falling
in the scale of such matters, and could bring himself to dine with
a Dobbs Broughton without any violent pain. But now he had fallen
so low that Dobbs Broughton had insulted him, and he was in such
distress that he did not know where to turn for ten pounds. Mr
Gazebee had beaten him at litigation, and his own lawyer had advised
him that it would be foolish to try the matter further. In his
marriage with the noble daughter of the De Courcys he had allowed the
framers of the De Courcy settlement to tie him up in such a way that
now, even when chance had done so much for him in freeing him from
his wife, he was still bound to the De Courcy faction. Money had been
paid away,--on his behalf, as alleged by Mr. Gazebee,--like running
water; money for furniture, money for the lease of a house, money
when he had been separated from his wife, money while she was living
abroad. It had seemed to him that he had been made to pay for the
entire support of the female moiety of the De Courcy family which had
settled itself at Baden-Baden, from the day, and in some respects
from before the day, on which his wife had joined that moiety. He had
done all in his power to struggle against these payments, but every
such struggle had only cost him more money. Mr. Gazebee had written
to him the civilest notes; but every note seemed to cost him
money,--every word of each note seemed to find its way into some
bill. His wife had died and her body had been brought back, with all
the pomp befitting the body of an earl's daughter, that it might be
laid with the old De Courcy dust,--at his expense. The embalming of
her dear remains had cost a wondrous sum, and was a terrible blow
upon him. All these items were showered upon him by Mr. Gazebee
with the most courteously worded demands for settlement as soon as
convenient. And then, when he applied that Lady Alexandrina's small
fortune should be made over to him,--according to a certain agreement
u