But what was he to do?  At the outset of his pecuniary troubles, when he first found it necessary to litigate some question with the De Courcy people, and withstand the web which Mortimer Gazebee wove so assiduously, his own attorney had introduced him to Dobbs Broughton, and the assistance which he had needed had come to him, at any rate, without trouble.  He did not especially like Mr Broughton; and when Mr Broughton first invited him to come and eat a little bit of dinner, he had told himself with painful remorse that in his early days he had been accustomed to eat his little bits of dinner with people of a different kind.  But there had been nothing really painful in this.  Since his marriage with a daughter of the De Courcys—­by which marriage he had intended to climb the highest pinnacle of social eating and drinking—­he had gradually found himself to be falling in the scale of such matters, and could bring himself to dine with Dobbs Broughton without any violent pain.  But now he had fallen so low that Dobbs Broughton had insulted him, and he was in such distress that he did not know where to turn for ten pounds.  Mr Gazebee had beaten him at litigation, and his own lawyer had advised him that it would be foolish to try the matter further.  In his marriage with the noble daughter of the De Courcys he had allowed the framers of the De Courcy settlement to tie him up in such a way that now, even when chance had done so much for him in freeing him from his wife, he was still bound to the De Courcy faction.  Money had been paid away—­on his behalf, as alleged by Mr Gazebee—­like running water; money for furniture, money for the lease of a house, money when he had been separated from his wife, money while she was still living abroad.  It had seemed to him that he had been made to pay for the entire support of the female moiety of the De Courcy family which had settled itself at Baden-Baden, from the day, and in some respects from before the day, on which his wife had joined that moiety.  He had done all in his power to struggle against these payments, but every such struggle had only cost him more money.  Mr Gazebee had written to him the most civil notes; but every note seemed to cost him money—­every word of each note seemed to find its way into some bill.  His wife had died and her body had been brought back, with all the pomp befitting the body of an earl’s daughter, that it might be laid with the De Courcy dust—­at his expense.  The embalming of her dear remains had cost a wondrous sum, and was a terrible blow upon him.  All these items were showered upon him by Mr Gazebee with the most courteously worded demands for settlement as soon as convenient.  And then, when he applied that Lady Alexandrina’s small fortune should be made over to him—­according to a certain agreement under which he had made over all his possessions to his wife, should she have survived him—­Mr Gazebee expressed a mild opinion that he was wrong in his law, and blandly recommended