“But I understood you just now that nobody knew she was your sister, when she first published the pieces that are now collected in that book,” said Lewis, with his characteristic pertinacity.
“There’s that craft again,” said Hyacinth; “can’t you make her out, Lewis?”
“No—by Jove,” replied Lewis, sarcastically; “I can’t make anything out. I never was so be-fogged in my life;” and he bent a penetrating glance on the masked face before him. “It is past my finding out, at least just now; but I’ve a Yankee tongue in my head, so I don’t despair, with time and perseverance;” and Lewis followed Hyacinth into the house.
“Confounded disagreeable fellow,” soliloquized Hyacinth, as he handed him over to a knot of ladies in the drawing-room; “very awkward that paragraph; I wish I had the fellow who wrote it, at pistol-shot distance just now; well, if I am badgered on the subject of ‘Floy’s’ poverty, I shall start a paragraph saying, that the story is only a publisher’s trick to make her book sell; by Jove, they don’t corner me; I have got out of worse scrapes than that before now, by the help of my wits and the lawyers, but I don’t think a paper of any influence would attack me on that point; I have taken care to secure all the more prominent ones, long ago, by judicious puffs of their editors in the Irving Magazine. The only one I fear is the ——, and I will lay an anchor to windward there this very week, by praising the editor’s last stupid editorial. What an unmitigated donkey that fellow is.”
CHAPTER LXXIX.
“How are you, Walter,” said Mr. Lewis, extending his hand; “fine day; how goes the world with you? They say you are a man who dares to ‘hew to the line, let the chips fly in whose face they will.’ Now, I want you to tell me if ‘Floy’ is really a sister of Hyacinth Ellet, the editor of ‘The Irving Magazine.’ I cannot believe it, though he boasted of it to me the other day, I hear such accounts of her struggles and her poverty. I cannot see into it.”
“It is very easily understood,” said Mr. Walter, with a dark frown on his face; “Mr. Hyacinth Ellet has always had one hobby, namely—social position. For that he would sacrifice the dearest friend or nearest relative he had on earth. His sister was once in affluent circumstances, beloved and admired by all who knew her. Hyacinth, at that time, was very friendly, of course; her husband’s wine and horses, and his name on change, were things which the extravagant Hyacinth knew how to appreciate.