hard stern realities, in which selfish motives and interested
actions have their sphere. These gentlemen lived entirely in this layer,
and never condescended to allude to what went on elsewhere. If they took
a very disparaging view of life, it was not so much the admiration they
bestowed on knavery as the hearty contempt they entertained for whatever
was generous or trustful. Oh, how they did laugh at the poor "muffs" who
believed in anything or any one! To listen to them was to declare that
there was not a good trait in the heart, nor an honest sentiment which
had not its origin in folly. And the stupid dog who paid his father's
debts, and the idiot that beggared himself to portion his sisters, and
the wretched creature who was ruined by giving security for his friend,
all figured in a category despised and ridiculed!

"Were they happy in this theory?" you ask, perhaps. It is very hard to
answer the question. They were undoubtedly what is called "jolly;" they
laughed much, and seemed marvellously free from care and anxiety.

"And so, Trover," said Stocmar, as he sipped his claret
luxuriously,--"and so you tell me this is a bad season with you out
here,--few travellers, no residents, and little stirring in the way of
discounts and circular notes."

"Wretched! miserable!" cried the banker. "The people who come out from
England nowadays are mostly small twenty-pounders, looking sharp to the
exchanges, and watching the quotations like money-brokers."

"Where are the fast men all gone to? That is a problem puzzles me much,"
said Paten.

[Illustration: 330]

"They have gone over to Puseyism, and stained glass, and Saint
Winifred's shin-bones, and early Christian art," broke in Stocmar. "I
know them well, and their velvet paletots cut in the mediaeval fashion,
and their hair cut straight over the forehead."

"How slow a place must become with such fellows!" sighed Paten.

"The women are mostly pretty; they dress with a sort of quaint coquetry
very attractive, and they have a kind of demure slyness about them, with
a fascination all its own."

"We have the exact type you describe here at this moment now," said the
banker. "She never goes into society, but steals furtively about
the galleries, making copies of old Giottos, and such-like, and even
penetrating into the monasteries with a special permission from the
Cardinal-Secretary to examine the frescos."

"Is she young? Is she pretty?" asked Stocmar.

"She is bot