So there were fine ladies who began to avoid him, and those in power at Court and in the world who regarded him with lessening favour day by day! In truth, he had such debts, and his creditors pressed him so ceaselessly, that even had the world's favour continued, his life must have changed its aspect greatly. His lodgings were no longer the most luxurious in the fashionable part of the town, his brocades and laces were no longer of the richest, nor his habit of the very latest and most modish cut; he had no more an equipage attracting every eye as he drove forth, nor a gentleman's gentleman whose swagger and pomp outdid that of all others in his world. Soon after the breaking of his marriage with the heiress, his mother had died, and his relatives being few, and those of an order strictly averse to the habits of ill-provided and extravagant kinsmen, he had but few family ties. Other ties he had, 'twas true, but they were not such as were accounted legal or worthy of attention either by himself or those related to him.

So it befell that when my Lady Dunstanwolde's lacquey could not find him at his lodgings, and as the days went past neither his landlady nor his creditors beheld him again, his absence from the scene was not considered unaccountable by them, nor did it attract the notice it would have done in times gone by.

"He hath made his way out of England to escape us," said the angry tailors and mercers—who had besieged his door in vain for months, and who were now infuriated at the thought of their own easiness and the impudent gay airs which had befooled them. "A good four hundred pounds of mine hath he carried with him," said one. "And two hundred of mine!" "And more of mine, since I am a poor man to whom a pound means twenty guineas!" "We are all robbed, and he has cheated the debtors' prison, wherein, if we had not been fools, he would have been clapped six months ago."

"Think ye he will not come back, gentlemen?" quavered his landlady. "God knows when I have seen a guinea of his money—but he was such a handsome, fine young nobleman, and had such a way with a poor body, and ever a smile and a chuck o' the chin for my Jenny."

"Look well after poor Jenny if he hath left her behind," said the tailor.