“Can you spare me half an hour?” he asked.  Then he handed the package to the shop-man.  “Take care of that,” he stammered.  “It is valuable.  I will call to-morrow.”

That afternoon Kimberley accepted an invitation to stay at Shouldershott Castle.

He was prodigiously flattered and fluttered.  When he thought of being beneath the same roof with Lady Ella, he flushed and trembled as he had never done before.

“I shall see her,” he muttered wildly to himself.  “I shall see her in the ’alls, the ’alls of dazzling light.”  It is something of a wonder that he did not lose his mental balance altogether.

When he was daily in the presence of Ella, the little man’s heart ached with sweet anguish and helpless worship and desire.  Yet before her he was tongue-tied, incapable of uttering a consecutive sentence.  With her sister, Lady Alice Santerre, who had been the intended bride of the deceased heir to the Gallowbay Estate, Kimberley felt on a different footing.  He had hardly ever been so much at ease with anybody in his life as this young lady made him.

Kimberley’s own anxious efforts at self-improvement, Lady Alice’s good-natured advice, and the bold policy of the earl, who persuaded him to undergo the terrors of an election, and get returned to Parliament as member for Gallowbay, gradually made the millionaire a more presentable person.  He learned how to avoid dropping his h’s; but two vices were incurable—­the shyness and his appalling taste in dress.

The world, meanwhile, had guessed at the earl’s motives in extending his friendship to Kimberley, and the little man’s name was knowingly linked with that of Lady Alice.  Kimberley came to hear what the world was saying through meeting Mr. Blandy, his former employer.  Mr. Blandy invited him to his house, honoured the occasion with champagne, drank freely of it, and became confidential.

“The noble earl’ll nail you f’ one o’ the girls, Kimbly.  I’m a lill bit ’fected when I think, seeing my dear Kimbly ’nited marriage noble family.  That’s what makes me talk like this.  I b’leeve you’re gone coon already, ole man.  ’Gratulate you, allmy heart.”

Kimberley went away in a degradation of soul.  Was it possible that this peer of the realm could be so coarsely and openly bent on securing him and his money that the whole world should know of it?  What had Kimberley, he asked himself bitterly, to recommend him but his money?  But then, triumphing over his miseries, came the fancy—­he could have his dream of love; he had cried for the moon, and now he could have it.

III.—­Ella’s Martyrdom

The earl’s liabilities amounted roughly to ninety thousand pounds.  The principal mortgagee was insisting upon payment or foreclosure, and there was a general feeling abroad that the estate was involved beyond its capacity to pay.

Kimberley learned these circumstances in an interview with Mr. Begg.  A few days afterwards he drove up desperately to the castle and asked for a private interview with his lordship.