"Mrs. Boville told me last night that Waldemar Falkenstein is so dreadfully in debt, that she thinks he'll have to go into court—don't they call it?" lisped Bella, the next morning; "be arrested, or bankrupt, or something dreadful. Should you think it is true?"
"I know it's true," said Idiot Tweed, who was there, having a little music before luncheon. "He's confoundedly hard up, poor devil."
"But I thought he was in such a good position—so well off?" said Bella, observing with secret delight that her cousin's head was raised, and that the pen with which she was writing had stopped in its rapid gallop.
"Ah! so one thinks of a good many fellows," answered the Guardsman; "or, at least, you ladies do, who don't look at a man's ins and outs, and the fifty hundred things there are to bother him. Lots of people—householders, and all that sort of thing—that one would fancy worth no end, go smash when nobody's expecting it."
"And Mr. Falkenstein really is embarrassed?"
The Guardsman laughed outright. "That is a mild term, Miss Cashranger. I heard down at Windsor yesterday, from a man that knows his family very well, that if he don't pay his debts this week, Amadeus Levi will arrest him. I dare say he will. Jews do when they can't bleed you any longer, and think your family will come down handsomely. But they say the old Count won't give Falkenstein a rap, so most likely he'll cut the country."
That afternoon, on his return from the Deeds and Chronicles Office, whose slow red-tapeism ill suited his impatient and vigorous intellect, Waldemar sat down deliberately to investigate his affairs. It was true that Amadeus Levi's patience was waning fast; his debts of honor had put him deep in that worthy's books, and Falkenstein, as he sat in his lodgings, with the August sun streaming full on the relentless figures that showed him, with cruel mathematical ruthlessness, that he was fast chained in the Golden Fetters of debt, leaned his head upon his arms with the bitter despair of a man whose own hand has blotted his past and ruined his future.
The turning of the handle of his door roused him from his reverie. He looked up quickly.
"A lady wants to speak to you, sir," said the servant who waited on him.
"What name?"