“A million and a quarter!” said the poor peer.  “And if I don’t catch him, somebody else will.”

Meanwhile, Captain Jack Clare, an extremely popular young officer of dragoons, was in the depths of despair.  He was the younger brother of Lord Montacute, whose family was poor; he loved Lady Ella Santerre, whose family was still poorer.  The heads of the families had forbidden the match for financial reasons.  He had stolen an interview with Ella, and had found that she bowed to the decision of the seniors.

“It is all quite hopeless and impossible,” she had said.  “Good-bye, Jack!”

As he rode dispiritedly away, he could not see, for the intervening trees, that she was kneeling in the fern and crying.

II.—­A Peer in Difficulties

The Lady Ella slipped an arm about her father’s neck.

“You are in trouble, dear,” she said.  “Can I help you?”

“No,” said the poor nobleman.  “There’s no help for it, Beggs says, and they’ll have to cut down the timber in the park.  Poverty, my dear, poverty.”

This was a blow, and a heavy one.

“That isn’t the worst of it,” said Windgall, after a pause.  “I am in the hands of the Jews.  A wretched Hebrew fellow says he will have a thousand pounds by this day week.  He might as well ask me for a million.”

“The diamonds are worth more than a thousand pounds, dear,” she said gently.

“No, no, my darling,” he answered.  “I have robbed you of everything already.”

“You must take them, papa,” she said in tender decision.  She left him, only to return in a few minutes’ time with a dark shagreen case in her hands.  The earl paced about the room for a minute or two.

“I take these,” he said at last, “in bitter unwillingness, because I can’t help taking them, my dear.  I had best get the business over, Ella.  I will go up to town this afternoon.”

During the whole of his journey the overdressed figure of Kimberley seemed to stand before the embarrassed man, and a voice seemed to issue from it.  “Catch me, flatter me, wheedle me, marry me to one of your daughters, and see the end of your woes.”  He despised himself heartily for permitting the idea to enter his mind, but he could not struggle against its intrusion.

Next day Kimberley entered his jewellers to consult him concerning a scarf-pin.  It was a bull-dog’s head, carved in lava, and not quite life-size.  The eyes were rubies, the collar was of gold and brilliants.  This egregious jewel was of his own designing, and was of a piece with his general notions of how a millionaire should attire himself.

As he passed through the door somebody leapt from a cab carrying something in his hands, and jostled against him.  He turned round apologetically, and confronted the Earl of Windgall.

His lordship looked like a man detected in a theft, and shook hands with a confused tremor.