CHANDOS.

fastidious and patrician Chandos. On the surface,
Trevenna had but one set of friends, his aristocratic
acquaintances of the clubs and the Clarendon dinners;
tub rosa, this bright Bohemian was thoroughly versed
in every phase and, indeed, every sink of London life
and of human nature. It was "his way" to know
everybody—it might be of use some day; he went
now—in the same spirit of reckless activity and indom-
itable perseverance which had made him as a boy ask
the meaning of every machine and the tricks of every
trade that he passed—to the probing of every problem
and the cementing of every brick in life. The multi-
tudes whom he knew were countless; the histories he
had fathomed were unrecordable. Men were the pawns,
knights, bishops, and castles of Trevenna'c chess, and
he set himself to win the. game with them, never ne-
glecting the smallest, for a pawn sometimes gives check-
mate.
Trevenna sat now at breakfast early in the morning
—half-past eight, indeed—though he had not been
in bed until four. He slept the sound, sweet, peaceful
sleep of a child, and very little of that profound repose
sufficed for him. His rooms were scrupulously neat,
but bare of everything approaching art or decoration;
that washed down the flavorless coarseness of his
breakfast; then he thrust his breakfast-cup awry,
pocketed the lists, and went steadily to business. Not
that he looked grave, dull or absorbed even in that -, he
was simply bright, intelligent and alert, as he was in a
ducal smoking-room; but Ignatius Mathias knew that
those sagacious, sparkling glances would have discov-
ered the minutest flaw iii his finance, and that the man
who listened so lightly with a brier-wood pipe between
his lips, and his elbows on the mantel-piece, would
have been down on him like lightning at the slightest
attempt to blind or to cheat one who was keener even
than that keen Israelite.
"All right," said Trevenna, as, having come to the
completion of his monthly accounts, the Portuguese
closed his book and waited for instructious. Trevenna
never wasted words over business, rapidly as he chat-
tered over dinner-tables and in club-rooms; and Igna-
tius and he understood each other. "You take care to
keepTindall& Co. dark, eh?"
"Ever}' care, sir."
swimmer, his soul rose triumphant as he felt and he
measured his strength.
Twelve struck.
He, who was as punctual as if he were made by clock,
work, got up, changed his dress in ten minutes, and
rang for his tilbury to be brought round. It came, as
elegant a thing as ever went round the park at six on a
June day, with a chestnut mare in it, pure bred, who
would do twelve miles in flve-and-forty minutes, if
needed. Both the tilbury and the chestnut mare h»ji
been given him by Chandos, who knew that a man may
live in what den he pleases, but that he must drive a
good thing or be dropped by the mondes to-morrow. " I
will indemnify myself for my ascetic chop in Park
Lane, but I will pee how the wind is blowing for Sir
Galahad at the Corner first," thought Trevenna; and
thither he went.
The midday betting was eager, for it was within a
month of the Ascot week. "Tho gentlemen" were
barely out yet; but the book-makers were mustered in
full force, from the small speculators, who usually did
' Encourage them to think you Tindall & Co. by the ) a little quiet business only in trotting-matches and quiet
charming and impressive character of your denial,
your inflexible austerity, your constant references to
Chandos could not have lived a day in them, if he had   your principal.   The more you refer to him, you know.
been a poor man; condemned to them, he would have
hung an engraving here, or a cast from the antique
there, that would have gone some way to redeem them
in their useful ugliness. Trevenna was utterly indif-
ferent to that ugliness; as far as his eyes went, he
would have been as happy in a garret as in a palace.
His breakfast was only coffee and a chop; he exercised
the strictest economy in his life. It was not, to be sure,
very painful to him; for he had the run of all the
wealthiest houses in England, and was welcomed to
every table. Still, it was significant of the man that,
well as he liked all gourmet's delicacies, he never by
any chance squandered money on them, and if he had
to go without them from year's end to year's end. never
would have done. Naturally he was very self-indulgent,
but he had schooled himself into considerable control.
The coffee was something rough, the chop was some-
thing tough—English cookery pure; but Trevenna, who
would know to a T what was wanting to the flavor of
a white sauce at the best club in Pall Mall, and who
could appreciate every finest shade in the most mas-
terly art of the Park-Lane chef, took both chop and
coffee without a murmur. In the first place, he had
the good appetite of a thoroughly healthy and vigor-
ous constitution ; in the second, he would compensate
himself by the daintiest and most delicious of noon
déjeuners at Chandos' house.
While he ate and drank he was looking at some
memoranda, and talking to a man before him—a man
who stood before him as an inferior before his em-
ployer; a tall man, lean, venerable, saturnine, with
iron-gray hair that floated on his shoulders like a pa-
triarch, and down his chest in a waving beard—a man
in his sixtieth year, with his shoulders a little bowed.
and his hand lightly clasped in front of him. This was
Ignatius Mathias, of the firm of Tindall & Co., which
firm was well known Citywards, in a little, dark, crook-
ed, stifling lane, where their dusky, sullen-looking,
rickety door was only too familiar to men in the Guards,
men in Middle Temple, men in the Commons.and men in
nothing at all but a fashionable reputation and a cloud
of debts. Tindall & Co. dealt in damaged paper chiefly;
they bought up most of the awkward things that
floated in the market, and, it was said, were making a
great deal of money. This was but guess-work, how-
ever; for the little grimy den of an office told no
secrets, however many it guarded; and who was Tin-
dall, and .vho were Co.. was a thing never known; the
only person ever seen, ever found there as responsible,
Was Ignatius Mathias, a Castilian Jew, and most peo-
ple considered that he was the firm ; they never were
surer on this point than when he shook his head gravely
and said he "could but act on his instructions; his
principal had been very positive; his principal could
not wait."
But, be this as it might, Ignatius Mathias was no
common Jew lender; he never sought to palm off a
miserable home-smoked Rembrandt, a cracked violin
christened a Straduarius, or a case of wretched mar-
sala called madeira, on a customer. Tindall & Co. had
none of these tricks; they simply did business, and if
they did it in a very severe manner, if when they had
sucked their orange dry they threw the peel away,
something cruelly, into the mud, they still only did
business thoroughly legitimately, thoroughly strictly.
Their customers might curse them with terrible bitter-
ness, as the head and root of their destruction, but
they could never legally complain of them.
" Sit down, Mathias; sit down, and pour yourself out
a cup of coffee," said Trevenna, who was always
pleasant and cordial to everybody, and gained the suf-
frages of all the lower classes to a man. "I'll run my
eyes through these papers; and when you have drank
your coffee, be able to account me the receipts of the
month. I know what they should be: we'll see what
they are."
"T?u Y,m ,flnd them correct, sir," said Mathias
meekly; "and I need no coffee, I thank you."
Neither did he take the proffered seat; he remained
standing, his dark brooding eyes dwelling on the
parchment-bound receipt-book open before him
The papers supplied the sauce whieh was wanting to
Trevenna s underdone mutton; as he glanced through
them his humorous lips laughed silently every now
and then, and his light-blue, cloudless, dauntless eyes
sparkled with a suppressed amusement. These papers
and their like, brought him as keen a pleasure and ex-
citation as other men find in a fox-hunt or a deer-
drive: it was the chase, and without, as Trevenna
would have said, the fatigue of dashing over bulflnehes
or watching in sloppy weather for the quarry; it was a
battue into which all the game was driven ready to
hand—through and through under the fire of the guns
The beaters had all the trouble; the marksman all thé
sport.
" Chittenden:—dined with him at the Star and Garter
last Thursday: we'll soon stop those dinners, my boy
Bertie Brabazon:—oh! he's going to be married to thé
Rosefleck heiress: better let him alone. Grey Grœme-
—who would have thought of hit being in Queer Street»
Jemmy Haughton :—little fellow—barrister—got a
bishop for an uncle—bishop well bled—won't see him
screwed; Church hates scandals—specially when it's
In lawn sleeves. Talbot 0*Moore—Warely—Belminster
—-Very good—very good, "murmured Trevenna over
detarls of paper floating about town, that those whom
it otherwise concerned would have rather charac-
terized, o» the contrary, as very bad. He meditated a
little while over the memoranda—amused meditation
the more they'll be sure that he doesn't exist.   Every-
body takes it for granted that a Jew lies."
There was a cheerful, easy serenity in the tone, as
though uttering the pleasantest compliment possible,
that made them sound all the more cutting, all the
more heartless; yet they were spoken with such happy
indifference.
The Jew's dark and hollow cheek flushed slightly: he
bent his head.
"I observe all your commands, sir."
"Of course you do," said Trevenna, carelessly.
" The first you disobey will set the police after Young
Hopeful. Tell him it's no use to hide: 1 know he's at
that miserable little Black Forest village now. He may
just as well come and walk about London. He can't
escape me. When I want him, I shall put my hand on
him if he buries himself under a Brazilian forest; you
know that."
A change came over the immovable, impassive form
of the Castilian—a change that shook him suddenly
from head to foot, as a reed trembles in the wind.
What little blood there was in his dark, worn face for-
sook it; a look of hunted and terrible anguish came
into his eyes. With the long-suffering patience of his
race, no outburst of passion or of entreaty escaped
him ; but his lips were dry as bones as he murmured,
faintly: "Sir, sir, be merciful! I serve faithfully: I
will give my body night and day to redeem the lad's
sin."
Trevenna- laughed lightly as he blew a cloud of smoke
from the little brier-wood pipe; but his glance rested
meaningly on the Jew's, looking him through.
"That's the compact.    Keep it, and don't touch the
boy," he said, curtly.
" You are very good, sir."
There was no hypocrisy here ; acute, parsimonious,
keen to cunning, sagacious to unscrupulousness as Ig-
natius Mathias might be in commercial transactions,
here he was grateful and gentle, with a humility that
made him the bond-slave of this Crawing-room wit,
this club amusé, this man-about-town, and a terrible
supplicating fear mingled with the breathless thank-
fulness with which he looked at a benefactor whom
most men would have been tempted to hold a task-
master.
" YXu may go now, Mathias," said Trevenna, with a
nod. "You know what to do in all cases; and don't
forget to put the screw on to Totheringay at once. The
next time, come a little earlier—seven or so; i£ I'm in
bed, I'll see you. It's rather dangerous when people
are about; your visits might get blown on. All my
people—the dainty gentlemen—are never up till noon-
day, it's true; but their servants might be about. Atall
events, 'safe bind, safe find.' They might wonder what
I borrowed money of you for, it would hurt my char-
acter."
He laughed gayly and merrily over the words; they
tickled his fancy. The Jew bowed reverentially to
him, gathered up his papers, and left the room.
"The best organizations are sure to have a flaw,"
thought Trevenna, leaning there still with his elbows
on the mantle-piece, smoking meditatively. " Now,
there is that Jew; marvellous clever fellow, shrewd,
got head enough to be a finance-minister; grind a man
as well as anybody can; take you in rfiost neatly ; a
magnificent machine altogether for cheating, and hard
as a flint ; and yet that Jew's such a fool over his worth-
less young rascal of a son that you can turn him round
your finger through it. There he's as soft as an idiot
and as blind as a bat. Incomprehensible that a man
can let such trash creep into him ! It's very odd men
have so many weaknesses; I don't think I've got one."
He had one; but, like most men, he did not imagine
it as weakness, and in truth it was not a very tender
one, though it was very dominant.
" Not at home to all the dukes in the world, my dear,
till twelve," said he, as the maid-servant of his lodgings
(he kept no man-servant of any kind, except a minia-
ture tiger to hang on behind his tilbury) cleared away
the breakfast-service. That done, Trevenna sat down
to a table strewn with blue-books, books on political
economy, books on population and taxation, books on
government, books English, French, German, and
American, all tending to the same direction of study.
He certainly did not need to ponder over the statistics
of nations to conduct his affairs with Ignatius Mathias,
however intricate they were, and he. had received every
benefit that a first-rate education can confer. But he
was one of those wise men who remember that the
longest and most learned life, spent aright, never
ceases to learn till its last breath is drawn; and, more-
over, far away in limitless perspective in Trevenna's
ambitions lay an area where the victory is not tothe
strong, nor the race to the swift, but to the ablest tac-
tician in such rare instances as it departs from the
hereditary winnfrs—an arena where adventurers are
excluded as utterly as men of the foreign states,though
they were princes, were excluded from the games of
Ehs. So for three hours and a half Trevenna, that idle,
gossiping flaneur, that town-jester whom the town
ca led Chandos Chicot, plunged himself deep into
political subtleties, and the science of statecraft, and
the close logic of finance, bringing to their problems a
head which grew only clearer the tougher the problem
it clenched, the deeper the ground it explored! Hard
study was as thorough a revelry to Trevenna as plung-
ing into the cool, living water is to a great swimmer.
Like the swimmer, his heart beat joyously as he dived
only to nse again the fresher and thé bolder.   Like the
handicaps, to the great gamblers of the ring, who took
noblemen's odds in thousands, and netted as much
in lucky hits as those other great gamblers of the
'Change and the Bourse whom a world that frowns on
the Heath smiles on so benignly when they are suc-
cessful. All the vast genus, flashy, slangy, sharp as
needles, with a language of their own, a literature of
their own, a world of their own, whom marquises and
earls are eagerly familiar with in the levelling atmos-
phere of the Lawn and the Downs, and give a distant
frigid nod to, at the uttermost, if they pass them in
Piccadilly, were there; and amidst them, in the terrific
babel of raised voices. Trevenna pushed his way—as he
pushed it everywhere.
Sir Galahad was higher than ever in public favor. All
the shrewdest men were afraid to touch him. The
Clarencieux stables had been famous since the Re-
fency. Trevenna bet but very little usually, he was
nown to have but little money to risk; but men were
eager to have his opinion of the favorite. None had
such opportunities of telling to a nicety the points,
powers, stay, and pace of the Clarencieux horse in its
prime. He gave the opinion frankly enough. Sir Gal-
ahad was the finest horse of the year, and to his mind
would all but walk over the course. The opinion went
for a great deal, especially from one who was a mas-
ter of stable-science, but who was no betting-man him-
self. He had laid heavy bets in Chandos' name, back-
ing the favorite for considerable sums so long as any
could be found rash enough to take them.
There was one little, spare, red-wigged, foxy, quiet
man who offered bets on a chestnut—Diadem, an out-
sider, unknown and unnoticed, generally looked on bv
the touts as fiddle-headed and weedy. The colt had
trained in an obscure stable northward, and was a
" colt " only to his breeders and owners in familiar par-
lance, having been known as a Plater in northern
autumn-meetings, though having earned no sort of re-
nown anywhere.
When Trevenna left Tattersall's, this little leg, a
worn-out, shattered creature, who had ruined himself
over one St. Léger and collapsed under it, was walking
slowly out in the sun, having backed nothing except
this ill-conditioned colt. Trevenna paused a second
by him.
"Drop Diadem's name, or they'll be smelling a rat.
Take the field against the favorite with any fools you
like, as widely as you can."
The words were so rapidly uttered that to passers
Trevenna seemed to have merely stopped a second to
strike a fusee, without noticing the little, broken-down
leg.
" Wonderfully dark we have kept that chestnut. Not
a soul has ever suspected the colt. He's so ugly ! that's
the treasure of him; and we've trained him "so close,
and roped him so cleverly, that the sharpest tout that
ever lay in a ditch all night to catch a morning gallop
doesn't guess what that precious awkward-looking
brute can do," thought Trevenna, as he got into his
tilbury.
And he went to eat a second breakfast with Chandos.
CHAPTER IV.
Lady Valencia St. Albans stood beside one of the
palms in the conservatory of her sister Lady Chester-
ton's house. It was the day of the Drawing-Room ; she
waited for her sister, with her white train carelessly
caught over one arm, and a shower of lace and silk
falling to the ground, and trailing there in a perfumy
billowy cloud. She was a picture perfect as the eye
could ask or the heart conceive in the glowing colors
of the blossoms round; and a painter would have given
her to his canvas as the Ordella or the Evadne of
Fletcher's dramas in all their sweet and delicate grace,
or, if passion could pass over those luminous, thought-
ful eyes, as Vittoria Corrombona in her royal and im-
perious beauty.
Passion had never troubled their stillness as yet.
Some touch of calamity had indeed cast its shadow on
her; the pressure of improvidence and of impoverish-
ment had sent her father to the Roman air that she had
breathed so long, and his decease had left her, for an
earl's daughter, almost penniless, while his title and
estates had passed away to a distant heir male. Her
poverty was bitter, terribly bitter, to the Queen of
Lilies, daughter of the once splendid house of Ivors.
She was little better than dependent on the generosity
of her brother-in-law. Lord Chesterton, and the nature
in her was born for the magnificence of dominion, the
consciousness of inalienable power.
She stood now under the curled, hanging leaves of
the palms, their pale Eastern green contrasting, as
though she had been posed there by a painter's skill,
with the exquisite coloring of her own beauty, and the
snowy, trailing robes that fell about her. Of that
beauty she was too proud to be vain ; she was simply-
conscious of it as an empress is conscious of the extent
of the sway of her sceptre.
" We're rather early," said her sister, a baroness, as
she entered the conservatory—a handsome brunette,
some years her senior, and very unlike her; a brusque,
abrupt, showy woman; ambitious and disappointed,
keenly disappointed because a distant cousin had
stepped between the Ivors earldom and her own young
son. ' Who sent you those flowers? Clydesmore? Ad-
mirable person, very admirable; great pity he's such
a bore. How well you look, Valencia! On ne pouvait
mieux. Chandos will be at the palace, vou know this
morning."
" Are you sure?"
There was a glance of interest from the Lily Queen's
deep, serene eyes.
"Perfectly.   He is everywhere.    It N the most diffl-