"Virtually, then, you give me no choice. I am sorry I troubled you with my concerns. I know whose interference I have to thank for it, and am only astonished you are so easily influenced," said Falkenstein, setting his teeth hard as he closed the door; for his father's easy desertion of him hit him hard, and he attributed it, rightly enough, to Maximilian, who, industriously gathering every grain of evil report against his brother, had taken such a character of Valérie—whom, unluckily, he had seen coming out of Duke street—down to Fairlee, that his father vowed to disinherit him, and his sisters never to speak to him. The doors both of his own home and Lowndes Square were closed to him; and in his adversity the only one that clung to him was Valérie.
If he had been willing to ask them, none of his friends could have helped him. Godolphin, with 20,000l. a year, spent every shilling on himself; Tom Bevan, but that he stood for a pocket borough of his governor's, would have been in quod long ago; and for the others, men very willing to take your money at écarté are not very willing to lend you theirs when you can play écarté no longer. Amadeus Levi grew more and more importunate; down on him at once, as Falkenstein knew, would come the Jew's griffes if he took any such unprofitable step as a marriage for love; and with all the passion in the world, mesdemoiselles, a man thinks twice before he throws himself into the Insolvent Court.
One night, nolens volens, decision was forced on him. He had seen Valérie that morning in the Pantheon, and they had parted to meet again at a ball, one of the lingering stragglers of the past season. About twelve he dressed and walked down Duke Street, looking for a cab to take him to Park Lane. Under a lamp at the corner, standing reading, he saw a man whom he knew by sight, and whose errand he guessed without hesitation. He paused unnoticed close beside him; he stood a moment and glanced over his shoulder; he saw a warrant for his own apprehension at Levi's suit. The man looking, to make sure of the dress, never raised his eyes. Falkenstein walked on, hailed a hansom in Regent street, and in a quarter of an hour was chatting with his hostess.
"Where is Miss L'Estrange?" he asked, carelessly.
"She was waltzing with Tom a moment ago," answered Mrs. Eden. "If you run after her so, I shall believe report. But is anything the matter, Falkenstein? How ill you look!"
"Too much champagne," laughed Waldemar. "I've been dining with Gourmet, and all the Falkensteins inherit the desire of obtaining that gentlemanlike curse, the gout."
"It's not the gout, mon ami," smiled Mrs. Eden.
"Break your engagement and waltz with me," he whispered, ten minutes after, to Valérie.
"I have none. I kept them all free for you!"
He put his arm round her and whirled her into the circle.