ho declared he was the very youth who stooped to pick
up a pin in a Parisian banker's courtyard, after his services as clerk
had just been rejected by the firm, and who was thereupon recognised as
a youth worthy of favour and taken into the banker's office. But this
touching incident of the pin was too ancient a tradition to fit Mr.
Smithson, still under forty.

Some there were who remembered him eighteen years ago as an adventurer
in the great wilderness of London, penniless, friendless, a
Jack-of-all-trades, living as the birds of the air live, and with as
little certainty of future maintenance. And then Mr. Smithson
disappeared for a space--he went under, as his friends called it; to
re-appear fifteen years later as Smithson the millionaire. He had been
in Peru, Mexico, California. He had traded in hides, in diamonds, in
silver, in stocks and shares. And now he was the great Smithson, whose
voice was the voice of an oracle, who was supposed to be able to make
the fortunes of other men by a word, or a wink, a nod, or a little look
across the crowd, and whom all the men and women in London
society--short of that exclusive circle which does _not_ open its ranks
to Smithsons--were ready to cherish and admire.

Mr. Smithson had been in Petersburg, Paris, Vienna, all over civilised
Europe during the last five weeks, whether on business or on pleasure
bent, nobody knew. He affected to be an elegant idler; but it was said
by the initiated that wherever Smithson went the markets rose or fell,
and hides, iron, copper, or tin, felt the influence of his presence.

He came back to London in time for the Cup Day, and in time to fall
desperately in love with Lesbia, whom he met for the first time in the
Royal enclosure.

She was dressed in white, purest ivory white, from top to toe--radiant,
dazzling, under an immense sunshade fringed with creamy marabouts. Her
complexion--untouched by Seraphine--her dark and glossy hair, her large
violet eyes, luminous, dark almost to blackness, were all set off and
accentuated by the absence of colour in her costume. Even the cluster of
exotics on her shoulder were of the same pure tint, gardenias and lilies
of the valley.

Mr. Smithson was formally presented to the new beauty, and received with
a cool contempt which riveted his chains. He was so accustomed to be run
after by women, that it was a new sensation to meet one who was not in
the least impressed by his superior merits.

'I don't