h thick and thin, and, _en effet_, gave
dinners and drums unnumbered to men and women, who, like Godolphin, went
there for the sake of his Lafitte, and quizzed him mercilessly behind
his back. The first day Harry dined there with nine other spirits worse
than himself--Cashranger having begged him to bring some of his
particular chums--he looked at the eleventh seat, and asked, with
consummate impudence, who it was for?

"Why, really, my dear Colonel, it is for--for myself," faltered the
luckless brewer.

"Oh?--ah?--I see," drawled Harry; "you mistook me; I said I'd dine
_here_--I didn't say I'd dine with _you_."

That, however, was four or five years before; now, Godolphin having
proclaimed his cook and cellar worth countenancing, and his wife, the
relict of a lieutenant in the navy, being an admirable adept in the
snob's art of "pushing," plenty of exclusive dandies and extensive fine
ladies crushed up the stairs on New Year's-night to one of Cashranger's
numerous "At homes." Among them, late enough, came Falkenstein. These
sort of crushes bored him beyond measure, but he wanted to see Godolphin
about some intelligence he had had of an intended illegitimate use of
the twitch to Mistletoe, that sweet little chestnut who stood favorite
for the Oaks. He soon paid his devoir to madame, who wasn't quite
accustomed even yet to all this grandeur after her early struggles on
half-pay, and to her eldest daughter, the Bella aforesaid, a showy,
flaunting girl with a peony color, and went on through the rooms seeking
Harry, stopping, however, for a word to every pretty woman he knew; for
though he began to find his game grow stale, he and the beau sexe have a
mutual attraction. Little those women guessed, as they smiled in his
handsome eyes, and laughed at his witty talk, and blushed at his soft
voice, how heartily sick he was of their frivolities, and how often
disappointment and sarcasm lurked in his mocking words. To be blase was
no affectation with Falkenstein; it was a very earnest reality, as with
most of us who have knocked about in the world, not only from the
variety of his manifold experiences, but from the trickery, and censure,
and cold water with which the world had treated him.

"You here, old fellow?" said Bevan of the Blues, meeting him in the
music-room, where some artistes were singing Traviata airs. "You don't
care for this row, do you? Come along with me, and I'll show you
something that will amuse you bett