to come.

He had a cousin in the City, a stock-jobber, who made and lost large
sums of money as fortune smiled or frowned. Quisante had the first five
hundred of Aunt Maria's thousand pounds in his pocket and told his
kinsman to use it for him.

"A spec?" asked Mr. Josiah Mandeville. "Isn't that rather rough on Aunt
Maria?"

Quisante looked surprised. "She gave it me, I haven't stolen it," he
said with a laugh.

"She gave it you to live on, to keep up your position, I suppose."

"I don't think she made any conditions. And if I can make money, I'll
give it back to her."

"Oh, you know best, I suppose," said Mandeville. "Only if I lose it?"

"Losing money's no worse than spending it." And then he mentioned a
certain venture in which the money might usefully be employed.

"How did you hear of that?" asked Mandeville with a stare; for his
cousin had laid his finger on a secret, on the very secret which
Mandeville had just decided not to reveal to him, kinsman though he was.

"I forget; somebody said something about it that made me think it would
be a good thing." Quisante's tone was vaguely puzzled; he often knew
things when he could give no account of his knowledge.

"Well, you aren't far wrong. You'll take a small profit, I suppose?
Shall I use my discretion?"

"No," smiled Quisante. "I shan't take a small profit, and I'll use mine.
But keep me well informed and you shan't be a loser."

Mr. Mandeville laughed. "One might think you had a million," he
observed. "Or are you proposing to tip me a fiver?" The thought of his
own thousands filled his tone with scorn; he did not do his speculating
with Aunt Maria's money.

"If you're too proud, I can take my business somewhere else--and the
name of the concern too," said Quisante, lighting a cigar. Cousin
Mandeville's stare had not escaped his notice.

Mandeville hesitated; he was very much annoyed; he liked his money, if
not himself, to be respected. But business is business, to say nothing
of blood being thicker than water.

"Oh, well, I'll do it for you," he agreed with lofty benevolence.
Quisante laughed. He would have covered his own retreat with much the
same device.

The riches then were on the way; Quisante had a far-seeing eye, and Aunt
Maria's five hundred was to imagination already prolific of thousands. A
hansom carried him up to Harley Street; he had been there three months
before and had been told to come again in three weeks. The punishment
fo