"I can easily credit that," said Lavendale, "since I opine you do not count your moneyed friends by the dozen."
"O, but there are varieties of the species," answered Philter, unabashed by the snub. "There are many who have a genius for making money, but few who possess the noble art of spending it. Indeed, I doubt if you ever get those two faculties united in the same person. The man who makes his own fortune has a silly greed for keeping it. Only in the second generation of money-getters do you find the royal art of the spender and the connoisseur. Now, our friend Topsparkle was born in the purple. He was swaddled in point d'Alençon, and fed out of a parcel-gilt porringer."
"So you have been at Ringwood Abbey, Tom," said Lavendale, with a half-unconscious insolence. "The company there must be curiously mixed, I take it."
"So much the better for the company. 'Tis only in mixed society you find the true sparkle, the fire of clashing wits, the lightning flashes of adverse opinions. Yes, at Ringwood one finds every shade of opinion in politics, from the notorious Jack to the sleek Muggite—from satisfied placemen to discontented non-jurors. Bolingbroke was there last winter, the object of everybody's interest and curiosity, after his long exile. He is as handsome as ever, and almost as fascinating as when he bewitched half the women of fashion and quality, and yet was the abject slave of Clara, a nymph who sold oranges in the Court of Requests. Now he brags of his French wife and his farm near Uxbridge, a poor plaything of a place on which he has just spent a trifling twenty thousand or so. Here he grows turnips and affects Cincinnatus, pretends to have done with politics and to live only for breeding cattle and cultivating the classics. And no sooner had that sun sunk below the horizon than there rose a more prosperous luminary in the person of Walpole. Carteret, the all-accomplished, have I met there, and punning Pulteney, and hesitating Grafton, with his grand airs of royalty by the left hand; and in fact the society at Ringwood Abbey is but a new illustration of an ancient truth, that if a man be but rich enough, he can always keep the highest company in the land."
"And how do you pay your footing among all these grandees, Mr. Philter? Do you write an acrostic for one, and a love-song for another, fetch and carry between peers and their mistresses, or comb shock-dogs for peeresses?"
"I hope you have not such a low idea of a journalist's status, my lord. Be assured that I do nothing to degrade the dignity of letters."
"What, not borrow a ten-pound note from St. John, or sell a political secret to Walpole? Be not offended, Tom; I must have my jest. 'Tis but gaiety of spirits that makes me impertinent. And at Ringwood, now, did you surprise no domestic mysteries, hear no hints about that tragedy you have suggested?"
"Not a word. All there seemed sunshine. Topsparkle adores his wife with an almost servile devotion, lives only upon her smiles, follows in her footsteps like her lap-dog. I believe in his heart of hearts he is jealous of poor pampered pug, and would not regret to see the little beast expire of a surfeit of cream and kisses."
"And she—is she happy?" asked Lavendale, relaxing from simulated gaiety to moodiness.
"There I dare not answer off-hand. Who can swear to a fine lady's happiness? Her heart is a close-locked coffer, of which only her abigail or her lover has the key. I can pledge myself to the brilliancy of Lady Judith's eyes and conversation, to the lightness of her foot in a minuet or a country dance, to her dash and courage in the hunting-field, her impertinence to her superiors in rank, up to the throne itself; I can testify to her superb recklessness in expenditure and her princely hospitality: but to pronounce whether she is happy or miserable must be left to her guardian angel, if she have one."