and lost a fortune in different companies, the names of which Harry hardly caught, for they set him speculating upon the new Company which was to make his own small fortune too. Lowndes, however, refused to be drawn back to that momentous subject. Nor were all the exploits he recounted of a financial cast; there were some which Harry would have flatly disbelieved the day before; but one and all were consistent with the character of the man as he had seen it since. 

 Great names seemed as familiar to him as his own, and, after the scene at the tailors', Harry could well believe that Mr. Lowndes had heckled a very eminent politician to his inconvenience, if not to the alleged extent of altering the entire course of a General Election. He was also the very man to have defended in person an action for libel, and to have lost it by the little error of requesting the judge to "be good enough to hold his tongue." The consequences had been serious indeed, but Lowndes described them with considerable relish. His frankness was not the least of his charms as a raconteur. Before he went he had confessed to one crime at least—that of blackmailing a surgeon-baronet for a thousand pounds in his own consulting-room. 

 "He got a hold of the bell-rope," said Lowndes, "but it was no use his playing the game of bluff with me. I simply laughed in his face. He'd murdered a poor man's wife—vivisected her, Ringrose—taken her to pieces like a watch—and he'd got to pay up or be exposed." 

 For it was disinterested blackmail, so that even this story was characteristic if incredible. It illustrated what may be termed an officious altruism—which Harry had seen operating in his own behalf—side by side with a perfectly piratical want of principle which Lowndes took no pains to conceal. It was impossible for an impressionable young fellow, needing a friend, not to be struck by one so bluff, so masterful, so kind-hearted, and probably much less unscrupulous than it pleased him to appear; and it was impossible for Harry Ringrose not to put the kind heart first, as he came upstairs after seeing Lowndes into a hansom, and thought how joyfully he would come up them if he were sure of earning even one hundred a year. 

 And Lowndes said three! 

 "I am thankful you like him," said Mrs. Ringrose, who was still awake. "But—we all can see the faults of those we really like—and there's one fault I do see in Mr. Lowndes. He is so sanguine!" Mrs. Ringrose might have added that we see those faults the plainest when they are also our own. 

 Prev. P 46/223 next