His manner is good. There is a suavity without
feebleness or smallness."
Mrs. Bazalgette's eye flashed, but she answered with apparent
nonchalance: "I am glad you like him; you will take him off my hands
now and then. He must not be neglected; Bazalgette would murder us.
_Apropos,_ remind me to ask him to tell you Mr. Hardie's story,
and how he comes to be looked up to like a prince in this part of the
world, though he is only a banker, with only ten thousand a year."
"You make me quite curious, aunt. Cannot you tell me?"
"Me? Oh, dear, no! Paper currency, foreign loans, government
securities, gold mines, ten per cents, Mr. Peel, and why _one_
breaks and _another_ doesn't! all that is quite beyond me.
Bazalgette is your man. I had no idea your mousseline-delame would
have washed so well. Why, it looks just out of the shop; it--" Come
away, reader, for Heaven's sake!
CHAPTER XI.
THE man whom Mr. Bazalgette introduced so smoothly and off-hand to
Lucy Fountain exercised a terrible influence over her life, as you
will see by and by. This alone would make it proper to lay his
antecedents before the reader. But he has independent claims to this
notice, for he is a principal figure in my work. The history of this
remarkable man's fortune is a study. The progress of his mind is
another, and its past as well as its future are the very corner-stone
of that capacious story which I am now building brick by brick, after
my fashion where the theme is large.
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