Page:Marie Corelli - the writer and the woman (IA mariecorelliwrit00coat).pdf/181

 that it should be somewhat risqué; in fact, the more indecent the better. It was pitiful advice and wholly false, for the reason that the great majority of publishers most carefully avoid works of the kind. Tempest's case is bad indeed. He must starve, because his ideas are "old-fashioned." Moreover, he cannot pay his landlady her bill. And just at this critical moment two things happen. He receives £50 from an old chum and £5,000,000 from Satan. But he is not aware of the real source from which proceeds the latter sum. Presumably it comes from an unknown uncle whose solicitors confide to the legatee that the old man had a strange idea "that he had sold himself to the devil, and that his large fortune was one result of the bargain." But who, with five millions to his name, would worry about an old man's fancies? Certainly not Geoffrey Tempest. Probably no man.

On the very night that the intimation of his good fortune reaches him, the newly made millionaire receives a call from Prince Lucio Rimânez, whose person is beautiful, whose conversation is witty to brilliance, whose wealth is unlimited, and whose age is mysterious. The meeting takes place very suitably in the dark, and the hands of the pair meet in the gloom "quite blandly and without