ould say even higher ones,' said Tancred.

'I can understand you; your feelings are my own. Jerusalem has been
the dream of my life. I have always been endeavouring to reach it, but
somehow or other I never got further than Paris.'

'And yet it is very easy now to get to Jerusalem,' said Tancred; 'the
great difficulty, as a very remarkable man said to me this morning, is
to know what to do when you are there.'

'Who said that to you?' inquired Lady Bertie and Bellair, bending her
head.

'It was the person I was going to call upon when I met you; Monsieur de
Sidonia.'

'Monsieur de Sidonia!' said the lady, with animation. 'Ah! you know
him?'

'Not as much as I could wish. I saw him to-day for the first time. My
cousin, Lord Eskdale, gave me a letter of introduction to him, for
his advice and assistance about my journey. Sidonia has been a great
traveller.'

'There is no person I wish to know so much as M. de Sidonia,' said Lady
Bertie and Bellair. 'He is a great friend of Lord Eskdale, I think?
I must get Lord Eskdale,' she added, musingly, 'to give me a little
dinner, and ask M. de Sidonia to meet me.'

'He never goes anywhere; at least I have heard so,' said Tancred.

'He once used to do, and to give us great fetes. I remember hearing of
them before I was out. We must make him resume them. He is immensely
rich.'

'I dare say he may be,' said Tancred. 'I wonder how a man with his
intellect and ideas can think of the accumulation of wealth.'

''Tis his destiny,' said Lady Bertie and Bellair. 'He can no more
disembarrass himself of his hereditary millions than a dynasty of the
cares of empire. I wonder if he will get the Great Northern. They talked
of nothing else at Paris.'

'Of what?' said Tancred.

'Oh! let us talk of Jerusalem!' said Lady Bertie and Bellair. 'Ah, here
is Augustus! Let me make you and my husband acquainted.'

Tancred almost expected to see the moustached companion of the
morning, but it was not so. Lord Bertie and Bellair was a tall, thin,
distinguished, withered-looking young man, who thanked Tancred for his
courtesy of the morning with a sort of gracious negligence, and, after
some easy talk, asked Tancred to dine with them on the morrow. He was
engaged, but he promised to call on Lady Bertie and Bellair immediately,
and see some drawings of the Holy Land.

CHAPTER XIX.

_Lord Henry Sympathises_

PASSING through a marble antechamber, Tancred was ushered into an
apar