Bella."

"Yes, she'll cut up rough. By George! I quite envy you your young
genius."

"She isn't _mine_," said Falkenstein, bitterly.

"She might be if you chose."

"Poor little thing!--yes. But love is too expensive a luxury for a
ruined man, even if---- The devil take this key, why won't it unlock?
You're off to half a dozen parties I suppose, Tom?"

"And where are you going?"

"Nowhere."

"What! going to bed at half-past ten?"

"There is no particular sin in going to bed at half-past ten, is there?"
said Waldemar, impatiently. "I haven't the stuff in me for balls and
such things. I'm sick of them. Good-night, old fellow."

He went up-stairs to his room, threw himself on his bed, and, lighting
his pipe, lay smoking and thinking while the Abbey clock tolled the
hours one after another. The _longs yeux bleus_ haunted him, for
Waldemar had already too many chains upon him not to shrink from adding
to them the Golden Fetters of a fresh passion, and marriage, unless a
rich one, was certain to bring about him all his entanglements. He
resolved to seek her no more, to check the demonstrative affection
which, like Esmeralda, "a la fois naive et passionnee," she had no
thought of concealing from him, and which, as Falkenstein's conscience
told him, he had done everything to foster. "What is a man worth if he
hasn't strength of will?" he muttered, as he tossed on his bed. "And
yet, poor little Valerie---- Pshaw! all women learn quickly enough to
forget!"

Some ten days after he was calling in Lowndes Square. True as yet to his
resolution, he had avoided the tete-a-tete walks in the Gardens; and
Valerie keenly felt the change in his manner, though in what he did for
her he was as kind as ever. The successful run of "Scarlet and White,"
the praises of its talents, its promises of future triumphs--all the
admiration which, despite Bella's efforts to keep her back, the _yeux
bleus_ excited--all were valueless, if, as she vaguely feared, she had
lost "Count Waldemar." The play had made a great sensation, and the
Cashrangers had taken a box the night before, as they made a point of
following the lead and seeing everything, though they generally forswore
theatres as not quite _ton_. Pah! these people, "qui se couchent
roturiers et se levent nobles," they paint their lilies with such
superabundant coloring, that we see, at a glance, the flowers come not
out of a conservatory but out of an atelier.

They were out, as it ch