at Mr. McCabe's scheme
for raising the level of genius has been as satisfactory as it was
original. Genius is riz.

But who 'cornered' the muddy pearls in Cagayan Sulu?

That secret is only known to Lady Bude, her confessor, and the
Irish-American agent whom she employed. For she, as we saw, had got at
the nature of poor Jenkins's project and had acquainted herself with the
wonderful properties of the pearls, which she cornered.

As a patriot, she consoles herself for the loss of the other exhibits to
her country, by the reflection that Berbalangs would have been the most
mischievous of pauper immigrants. But of all this Bude knows nothing.

XI. ADVENTURE OF THE MISERLY MARQUIS

I. The Marquis consults Gray and Graham

Few men were, and perhaps no marquis was so unpopular as the Marquis of
Restalrig, Logan's maternal Scotch cousin, widely removed. He was the
last of his family, in the direct line, and on his death almost all his
vast wealth would go to nobody knew where. To be sure Logan himself
would succeed to the title of Fastcastle, which descends to heirs
general, but nothing worth having went with the title. Logan had only
the most distant memory of seeing the marquis when he himself was a
little boy, and the marquis gave him two sixpences. His relationship to
his opulent though remote kinsman had been of no service to him in the
struggle for social existence. It carried no 'expectations,' and did not
afford the most shadowy basis for a post obit. There was no entail, the
marquis could do as he liked with his own.

'The Jews _may_ have been credulous in the time of Horace,' Logan said,
'but now they insist on the most drastic evidence of prospective wealth.
No, they won't lend me a shekel.'

Events were to prove that other financial operators were better informed
than the chosen people, though to be sure their belief was displayed in a
manner at once grotesque and painfully embarrassing.

Why the marquis was generally disliked we might explain, historically, if
we were acquainted with the tale of his infancy, early youth, and
adolescence. Perhaps he had been betrayed in his affections, and was
'taking it out' of mankind in general. But this notion implies that the
marquis once had some affections, a point not hitherto substantiated by
any evidence. Perhaps heredity was to blame, some unhappy blend of
parentage. An ancestor at an unknown period may have bequeathed to the
marquis t