Mr. Horace Blondelle was making money very fast indeed.
The life suited him. Many people called him a gambler and a blackleg, and said that he fleeced his guests in more ways than one.
The haughtiest among the old aristocratic families cut him, not because he was a gambler—for, oh dear! it too often happened that their own fathers, brothers, husbands, or sons were gamblers!—but because he kept a hotel and took in money!
Notwithstanding this exclusion from companionship with certain families, Mr. Horace Blondelle led a very gay, happy, and prosperous life.
We see and grieve over this sort of thing very frequently in the course of our lives. We fret that the wicked man should "flourish like a green bay tree," and we forget that the time must come when he will be cut down and cast into the fire.
That time was surely coming for Mr. Horace Blondelle.
Meanwhile he "flourished."
The third season of the "Dubarry White Sulphur Springs," was even more successful than its forerunners had been.
People were possessed with a furor for the nasty waters and flocked by thousands to the neighborhood.
But the autumn of that year was marked by other events of more importance to this story.