etrated farther into
the throng. And then, as he proceeded, with those last words on his
ear, the consciousness came upon him that his position had undergone a
change. Difficult to define it; to an ordinary bystander people would
have seemed to welcome him cordially as ever. The gradations of respect
in polite society are so exquisitely delicate, that it seems only by a
sort of magnetism that one knows from day to day whether one has risen
or declined. A man has lost high office, patronage, power, never perhaps
to regain them. People don't turn their backs on him; their smiles are
as gracious, their hands as flatteringly extended. But that man would
be dull as a rhinoceros if he did not feel--as every one who accosts him
feels--that he has descended in the ladder. So with all else. Lose even
your fortune, it is not the next day in a London drawing-room that your
friends look as if you were going to ask them for five pounds. Wait a
year or so for that. But if they have just heard you are ruined, you
will feel that they have heard it, let them bow ever so courteously,
smile ever so kindly. Lionel at Paris, in the last year or so, had been
more than fashionable: he had been the fashion,--courted, run after,
petted, quoted, imitated. That evening he felt as an author may feel who
has been the rage, and without fault of his own is so no more. The rays
that had gilded him had gone back to the orb that lent. And they who
were most genial still to Lionel Haughton were those who still most
respected thirty-five thousand pounds a year--in Guy Darrell!

Lionel was angry with himself that he felt galled. But in his wounded
pride there was no mercenary regret,--only that sort of sickness which
comes to youth when the hollowness of worldly life is first made clear
to it. From the faces round him there fell that glamour by which the
_amour propre_ is held captive in large assemblies, where the _amour
propre_ is flattered. "Magnificent, intelligent audience," thinks the
applauded actor. "Delightful party," murmurs the worshipped beauty.
Glamour! glamour! Let the audience yawn while the actor mouths; let
the party neglect the beauty to adore another, and straightway the
"magnificent audience" is an "ignorant public," and the "delightful
party" a "heartless world."

CHAPTER IX.

Escaped from a London drawing-room, flesh once more tingles and
blood flows.--Guy Darrell explains to Lionel Haughton why he holds
it a duty to