of his attitude in life, a paradoxical distinction. Still handsome,
despite his fifty-six years, with a comeliness compounded of elegance
and proportion, wherein the grace of the dandy was fortified by
something military about the figure and the haughtiness of the face; he
wore with striking effect his black dress-coat, on which, to do honour
to Jenkins, he had pinned a few of his decorations, which he was in the
habit of never wearing except upon official occasions. The reflection
from the linen, from the white cravat, the dull silver of the
decorations, the smoothness of the thin hair now turning gray, enhanced
the pallor of the features, more bloodless than all the bloodless faces
that were to be seen that evening in the Irishman's house.

He had led such a terrible life! Politics, play under all its forms,
from the Stock Exchange to the baccarat-table, and that reputation of a
man successful with women which had to be maintained at all costs. Oh,
this man was a true client of Jenkins; and this princely visit, he owed
it in good sooth to the inventor of those mysterious pills which gave
that fire to his glance, to his whole being that energy so vibrating and
extraordinary.

"My dear duke, permit me to----"

Monpavon, with solemn air and a great sense of his own importance,
endeavoured to effect the presentation so long looked forward to; but
his excellency, preoccupied, seemed not to hear, continued his progress
towards the large drawing-room, borne along by one of those electric
currents that break the social monotony. On his passage, and while he
greeted the handsome Mme. Jenkins, the ladies bent forward a little with
seductive airs, a soft laugh, concerned to please. But he noticed only
one among them, Felicia, on her feet in the centre of a group of men,