endangered.

This latter hope had been suggested by a letter he one day showed me,
(as we were dining together alone, at the well-known Pellegrino,) which
had that morning been received by the Contessa from her husband, and the
chief object of which was--_not_ to express any censure of her conduct,
but to suggest that she should prevail upon her noble admirer to
transfer into his keeping a sum of 1000_l._, which was then lying, if I
remember right, in the hands of Lord Byron's banker at Ravenna, but
which the worthy Count professed to think would be more advantageously
placed in his own. Security, the writer added, would be given, and five
per cent. interest allowed; as to accept of the sum on any other terms
he should hold to be an "avvilimento" to him. Though, as regarded the
lady herself, who has since proved, by a most noble sacrifice, how
perfectly disinterested were her feelings throughout[51], this trait of
so wholly opposite a character in her lord must have still further
increased her disgust at returning to him, yet so important did it seem,
as well for her friend's sake as her own, to retrace, while there was
yet time, their last imprudent step, that even the sacrifice of this
sum, which I saw would materially facilitate such an arrangement, did
not appear to me by any means too high a price to pay for it. On this
point, however, my noble friend entirely differed with me; and nothing
could be more humorous and amusing than the manner in which, in his
newly assumed character of a lover of money, he dilated on the many
virtues of a thousand pounds, and his determination not to part with a
single one of them to Count Guiccioli. Of his confidence, too, in his
own power of extricating himself from this difficulty he spoke with
equal gaiety and humour; and Mr. Scott, who joined our party after
dinner, having taken the same view of the subject as I did, he laid a
wager of two sequins with that gentleman, that, without any such
disbursement, he would yet bring all right again, and "save the lady and
the money too."

It is indeed, certain, that he had at this time taken up the whim (for
it hardly deserves a more serious name) of minute and constant
watchfulness over his expenditure; and, as most usually happens, it was
with the increase of his means that this increased sense of the value of
money came. The first symptom I saw of this new fancy of his was the
exceeding joy which he manifested on my presenting to him