enough five shillings’ worth he has on his arm,” I put in as an after-thought.

’Twas odd how we fell to discussing this same Dr. Ean Fabos upon every occasion that came to us. Was it because of his money—riches beyond dreams to poor devils who must please the public or die dishonoured in the market-place? I venture, no. We of the Goldsmith Club care for no man’s money. Bid the Vanderbilts come among us, and we lift no hats. ’Tis true that in so far as they assist the mighty sons of Homer and Praxiteles to meet their just obligations upon quarter day, they have some use in the world. I have known circumstances when they have kept precious lives from the Underground Railway or the Round Pond in Kensington Gardens. But this is to betray the secrets of my club and of my poor friends Killock and Barry Henshaw and the rest.

What I was saying was that Ean Fabos’s riches made no more mark upon us than a lady’s parasol upon the back of a mule. They said he was a doctor of Cambridge, whose father had made a fortune out of Welsh coal and then joined his ancestors. My homage to his consideration, says I. May the warmth of his discovery glow in many hearts and long blaze in beneficent profusion up the chimneys of the Goldsmith Club! He has bequeathed us a noble son, whose dinners are second to none in the empire. Again I say, hats off. ’Twas a gentleman entirely.

But I speak of his son dancing with the little girl in red at the Fancy Fair at Kensington. Be sure that his six feet one would go bending to sixty-eight inches and whispering soft things in her ear at five shillings the waltz, as the programme told ye. And he such a silent man ordinarily—not to be moved from that rogue of a taciturn smile we see so often upon his face even when the wit of the club is worthy of the name we bear. They call Ean Fabos many names. Some say misogynist; others cynic; a few speak of his lacking heart; there are those who call him selfish. What’s he to do with all his money? Do his friends share it? The sacred shrines of Bacchus know better. He buys diamonds, they say. Just that, great diamonds and rubies and sapphires, not for a woman’s pretty arms or her white shoulders, you must know; but to lock up in his safe at his great house down Newmarket way; to lock up and hide from men and gloat upon in the silence of the night. That’s what the world says. I’d add to it that there’s no true charity in all London which has not benefited secretly by his generous alms. But that is known to few, and was never known to me until I met the daughter of my friend Oscroft, the painter; left an orphan as she was in the same unkind city.

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