elderly men with daughters--told him that they felt like fathers
towards him. All this Alphonse received with a bland innocence which
his Parisian education had no doubt taught him.

When they were gone, rattling away in their new carriages, he looked
after them with a laugh.

"And now," he said, "for ruin. I wonder what it will be like--new at
all events. And we all live for novelty nowadays. There is the price
of a luncheon at the club, however. Come, my friend, let us go
there."

"One change you must, at all events, be prepared for," I said, as we
stepped into his carriage. "A change of friends."

Alphonse understood and laughed. Cynicism is an arid growth, found to
perfection on the pavement, and this little Frenchman wore his boots
out thereon.

During luncheon my host recovered his spirits; although, to do him
justice, he was melancholy enough when he remembered his recent loss.
Once or twice he threw down his knife and fork, and for quite three
minutes all food and drink were nauseous to him.

"Ah!" he cried, "that poor old man. It tears the heart to think of
him."

He sat for a few moments with his chin in the palm of his hand, and
then slowly took up again the things of this life, wielding them
heartily enough.

"I wonder," he went on in a reflective voice, "if I did my duty
towards him. It was not difficult, only to make a splash and spend
money, and I did that--beautifully!"

"Coffee and chartreuse," he said to the waiter, when we had finished.
"And leave the bottle on the table. You know," he added, addressing
me, his face beaming with conscious pride, his hand laid impressively
on my arm--"you know this club drinks chartreuse in claret glasses.
It is our great distinguishing feature."

While religiously observing this law we fell to discussing the future.

"One cannot," observed my companion, philosophically, "bring on the
thunder-storm, however heavy the air may be. One can only gasp and
wait. I suppose the crash will come soon enough. But tell me how I
stand; I have not had time to think the last few days."

He had, indeed, thought only of others.

"We have," answered I, "done all that is possible to stop the payment
of these cheques; but a clever villain might succeed in realising them
one by one in different parts of the world, and thus outwit us."

"I wonder how it is," said my companion, afloat on a side issue like
any woman, "that a fool like myself--an incompetent ass with no
brai