is cheque to the deuce and go with it
himself.

The rest of the party was, to put it bluntly, a pleasant little
gathering in no way remarkable and rather spoilt by the presence of one
person who was not quite a gentleman. May struggled hard against the
mercilessness of the judgment contained in the last words; for it ought
to have proved quite final as regarded Alexander Quisante. As a fact it
would not leave her mind, it established an absolutely sure footing in
her convictions; and yet it did not seem quite final in regard to
Quisante. Perhaps Dick Benyon would maintain the proud level of his
remark about the genealogy, and remind her that somebody settled
Napoleon's claims by the same verdict. But one did not meet Napoleon at
little dinners, nor think of him with no countervailing achievements to
his name.

Her mind was so full of the man that when she joined her mother at a
party later in the evening, she had an absurd anticipation that
everybody would talk to her about him. Nobody did; that evening an
Arctic explorer and a new fortune-teller divided the attention of the
polite; men came and discussed one or other of these subjects with her
until she was weary. For once then, on Marchmont making an appearance
near her, her legs did not carry her in the opposite direction; she
awaited and even invited his approach; at least he would spare her the
fashionable gossip, and she thought he might tell her something about
Quisante. In two words he told her, if not anything about Quisante,
still everything that he himself thought of Quisante.

"I met Mr. Quisante at dinner," she said.

"That fellow!" exclaimed Marchmont.

The tone was full of weariness and contempt; it qualified the man as
unspeakable and dismissed him as intolerable. Was Marchmont infallible,
as Fanny had said? At least he represented, in its finest and most
authoritative form, the opinion of her own circle, the unhesitating
judgment against which she must set herself if she became Quisante's
champion. It would be much easier, and probably much more sensible, to
fall into line and acquiesce in the condemnation; then it would matter
nothing whether the vulgar did or did not elect to admire Dick Benyon's
peculiar friend. Yet a protest stirred within her; only her sense of the
ludicrous prevented her from adopting Dick's word and asking Marchmont
if he had ever seen the fellow in one of his "moments." But it would be
absurd to catch up the phrase like th