“Mr. Watkins Bodley, it seems,” said General Belch, “and I regret to say it, is in straitened pecuniary circumstances.  I understand he will feel that he owes it to his family to resign before the next session.  There will be a vacancy; and I am glad to say that the party is just now in a happy state of harmony, and that my influence will secure your nomination.  But come up to-night and talk it over.  I have asked Ele and Slugby, and a few others—­friends of course—­and I hope Mr. Bat will drop in.  You know Aquila Bat?”

“By reputation,” replied Abel.

“He is a very quiet man, but very shrewd.  He gives great dignity and weight to the party.  A tremendous lawyer Bat is.  I suppose he is at the very head of the profession in this country.  You’ll come?”

Abel was most happy to accept.  He was happy to go any where for distraction.  For the rooms in Grand Street had become inconceivably gloomy.  There were no more little parties there:  the last one was given in honor of Mrs. Sligo Moultrie—­before her marriage.  The elegant youth of the town gradually fell off from frequenting Abel’s rooms, for he always proposed cards, and the stakes were enormous; which was a depressing circumstance to young gentlemen who mainly depended upon the paternal purse.  Such young gentlemen as Zephyr Wetherley, who was for a long time devoted to young Mrs. Mellish Whitloe, and sent her the loveliest fans, and buttons, and little trinkets, which he selected at Marquand’s.  But when the year came round the bill was inclosed to Mr. Wetherley, senior, who, after a short and warm interview with his son Zephyr, inclosed it in turn to Whitloe himself; who smiled, and paid it, and advised his wife to buy her own jewelry in future.

It was not pleasant for young Wetherley, and his friends in a similar situation, to sit down to a night at cards with such a desperate player as Abel Newt.  Besides, his rooms had lost that air of voluptuous elegance which was formerly so unique.  The furniture was worn out, and not replaced.  The decanters and bottles were no longer kept in a pretty side-board, but stood boldly out, ready for instant service; and whenever one of the old set of men happened in, he was very likely to find a gentleman—­whose toilet was suspiciously fine, whose gold looked like gilt—­who made himself entirely at home with Abel and his rooms, and whose conversation indicated that his familiar haunts were race-courses, bar-rooms, and gambling-houses.

It was unanimously decreed that Abel Newt had lost tone.  His dress was gradually becoming flashy.  Younger sisters, who had heard their elders—­who were married now—­speak of the fascinating Mr. Newt, perceived that the fascinating Mr. Newt was a little too familiar when he flirted, and that his breath was offensive with spirituous fumes.  He was noisy in the gentlemen’s dressing-room.  The stories he told there were of such a character, and he told them so loudly, that more than once some husband, whose wife was in the neighboring room, had remonstrated with him.  Sligo Moultrie, during one of the winters that he passed in the city after his marriage, had a fierce quarrel with Abel for that very reason.  They would have come to blows but that their friends parted them.  Mr. Moultrie sent a friend with a note the following morning, and Mr. Newt acknowledged that he had been rude.