Page:Marie Corelli - the writer and the woman (IA mariecorelliwrit00coat).pdf/182

 guidance"; and we soon hear from the lips of the Prince that it is a most beautiful dispensation of nature that "honest folk should be sacrified in order to provide for the sustenance of knaves!" and that the devil not only drives the world whip in hand, but that he manages his team very easily.

Tempest and Rimânez forthwith become friends—even more, chums inseparable; and soon we find Mr. Geoffrey Tempest very aptly playing the part he had formerly rallied against—that of a worthless lounger with his pockets full of gold, and gluttonously swallowing the evil and corrupting maxims of his fascinating friend. He eats the best of food, drinks the most expensive of wines, and rides in the most luxurious of carriages; his book is published and advertised and boomed at his own expense, and he has not a particle of sympathy for the poor or the suffering. "It often happens that when bags of money fall to the lot of aspiring genius, God departs and the devil walks in." So asserts Rimânez—who ought to know; and so it proves in the case of his rich and ready disciple, Mr. Geoffrey Tempest. Nothing seems to disturb the serenity of the multi-millionaire in the early days of his new-found wealth and power—for the world bows before him—except a mysterious