"Ah! you rogue, Greenwood!" exclaimed the Marquis, highly delighted at the compliment thus conveyed—for with debauchees in fashionable life such a degrading assertion is a compliment, and a most welcome one, too:—"no—no—not so bad as that, either, Greenwood. Friendship before every thing!"
"No, my lord—love before every thing with your lordship!" cried Greenwood, gravely sustaining the familiar poke in the chest which his former compliment had elicited from the old nobleman. "You are really terrible amongst the women; and, some how or another, they cannot resist you. By the bye, how gets on the action which Dollabel has against you?"
"What! Dollabel, the actor at the Haymarket!" ejaculated the Marquis. "Oh! settled—settled long ago. My lawyer ferreted out an overdue bill of his, for ninety-odd pounds, bought it up for seven guineas, sued him on it, and threw him into some hole of a place in the City, that they call Redcross——"
"No—Bluecross, I think," suggested Greenwood, doubtingly—although he knew perfectly well to what place the Marquis was alluding.
"No—no—that isn't it either," cried the nobleman: "Whitecross Street—that's it."
"Ah! Whitecross Street—so it is!" exclaimed Greenwood. "What a memory your lordship has!"
"Yes—improves daily—better than when I was a boy," said the Marquis. "But as I was observing, my solicitor threw Dollabel into Whitecross Street gaol, and starved him into a compromise. I consented to give him his discharge from the debt and a ten-pound note to see his way with when he came out. But his wife was really a nice woman!"
"She was—a very nice woman," observed Greenwood. "You got out of that little crim. con. very nicely. Then there was Maxton's affair——"
"What! the tea-dealer in Bond Street!" exclaimed the Marquis, chuckling with delight as his exploits in the wars of love were thus recalled to his mind. "Oh! that was not so easily settled, my dear fellow. It went up to within a week of trial; and then Maxton agreed to stop all further proceedings and take his wife back if she came with a cool two thousand in her pocket. Well, my lawyer—knowing fellow, that!—drew him into a correspondence, and got him to receive his wife. Home she went:—Maxton met her with open arms—declared before witnesses that he was at length convinced of her innocence—(this he said to patch up her reputation)—and all was well till next morning, when he asked her to give him the two thousand pounds, that he might take them to the Bank. Then she laughed in his face—and he saw that he was done. Condonation, the civilians call it—and so he could not go on with the suit. Capital—wasn't it?"
"Capital, indeed!" ejaculated Greenwood, nearly dying with laughter.