The old man, a martyr to what he considered due to his favourite, endured the horror of the Ball until suppertime, and kept his eyes on us two.  He forgot, or pretended to forget, my foreign engagement altogether, though the announcement in the newspapers was spoken of by Sir Roderick and Lady Echester and others.

‘How do you like that?’ he remarked to me, seeing her twirled away by one of the young Rubreys.

‘She seems to like it, sir,’ I replied.

‘Like it!’ said he.  ’In my day you wouldn’t have caught me letting the bloom be taken off the girl I cared for by a parcel o’ scampish young dogs.  Right in their arms!  Look at her build.  She’s strong; she’s healthy; she goes round like a tower.  If you want a girl to look like a princess!’

His eulogies were not undeserved.  But she danced as lightly and happily with Mr. Fred Rubrey as with Harry Richmond.  I congratulated myself on her lack of sentiment.  Later, when in London, where Mlle. Jenny Chassediane challenged me to perilous sarabandes, I wished that Janet had ever so small a grain of sentiment, for a preservative to me.  Ottilia glowed high and distant; she sent me no message; her image did not step between me and disorder.  The whole structure of my idea of my superior nature seemed to be crumbling to fragments; and beginning to feel in despair that I was wretchedly like other men, I lost by degrees the sense of my hold on her.  It struck me that my worst fears of the effect produced on the princess’s mind by that last scene in the lake-palace must be true, and I abandoned hope.  Temple thought she tried me too cruelly.  Under these circumstances I became less and less resolutely disposed to renew the forlorn conflict with my father concerning his prodigal way of living.  ’Let it last as long as I have a penny to support him!’ I exclaimed.  He said that Dettermain and Newson were now urging on his case with the utmost despatch in order to keep pace with him, but that the case relied for its life on his preserving a great appearance.  He handed me his division of our twin cheque-books, telling me he preferred to depend on his son for supplies, and I was in the mood to think this a partial security.

‘But you can take what there is,’ I said.

’On the contrary, I will accept nothing but minor sums—­so to speak, the fractional shillings; though I confess I am always bewildered by silver,’ said he.

I questioned him upon his means of carrying on his expenditure.  His answer was to refer to the pavement of the city of London.  By paving here and there he had, he informed me, made a concrete for the wheels to roll on.  He calculated that he now had credit for the space of three new years—­ample time for him to fight his fight and win his victory.

‘My tradesmen are not like the tradesmen of other persons,’ he broke out with a curious neigh of supreme satisfaction in that retinue.  ’They believe in me.  I have de facto harnessed them to my fortunes; and if you doubt me on the point of success, I refer you to Dettermain and Newson.  All I stipulate for is to maintain my position in society to throw a lustre on my Case.  So much I must do.  My failures hitherto have been entirely owing to the fact that I had not my son to stand by me.’