"
* * * * *
Amongst those who envied Lady Eversleigh's good fortune, there was none
whose envy was so bitter as that of her husband's disappointed nephew,
Sir Reginald.
This woman had stood between him and fortune, and it would have been
happiness to him to see her grovelling in the dust, a beggar and an
outcast. Instead of this, he heard of her exaltation, and he hated her
with an intense hatred which was almost childish in its purposeless
fury.
He speedily found, however, that life was miserable without his evil
counsellor. The Frenchman's unabating confidence in ultimate success
had sustained the penniless idler in the darkest day of misfortune. But
now he found himself quite alone; and there was no voice to promise
future triumph. He knew that the game of life had been played to the
last card, and that it was lost.
His feeble character was not equal to support the burden of poverty and
despair.
He dared not show his face at any of the clubs where he had once been
so distinguished a member; for he knew that the voice of society was
against him.
Thus hopeless, friendless, and abandoned by his kind, Sir Reginald
Eversleigh had recourse to the commonest form of consolation. He fled
from a country in which his name had become odious, and took up his
abode in Paris, where he found a miserable lodging in one of the
narrowest alleys in the neighbourhood of the Luxembourg, which was then
a labyrinth of narrow streets and lanes.
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