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 silver harness, with the champagne that he had brought superseding our cheap little thin wine, with the bearskins and tigerskins that his servants spread for our seats over the green hill-mosses;—with all this some subtle charm of mirth had fled, some sense of inequality, of difference, had arisen.

I think he must have found us nearly as dull as he said that his own great world was.

He took greatly to our company, however; he would forsake his own people for us always, whenever he could. He would fain have had us go in return to brilliant suppers and the like that he gave in his rooms at the D'Orange, and at which they said that he was accustomed to spare no extravagance. My fellow-artists went to them, but not I: I had no means to return such costly courtesies, and it had always been my habit to refuse what I could not repay.

They thought, no doubt, that I kept her away from jealous fear, but I had no feeling of the kind: that I swear. I liked the young man, and I had no suspicion of evil. It was only that I had always been in a manner proud amongst those whom birth and wealth made my superiors in station, and I could not become a debtor.

It seemed to me that it would have a very ill look if I, a man ugly and poor, and struggling in 10*