"I might have been in a somewhat better pecuniary situation." But his actual situation under the head in question positively so little mattered to them that, having by that time lived deep into the sense of his advantage, he had kept no impression of the girl's rejoinder.

It had but sweetened the waters in which he now floated, tinted them as by the action of some essence, poured from a gold-topped phial, for making one's bath aromatic.

No one before him, never--not even the infamous Pope--had so sat up to his neck in such a bath.

It showed, for that matter, how little one of his race could escape, after all, from history.

What was it but history, and of THEIR kind very much, to have the assurance of the enjoyment of more money than the palace-builder himself could have dreamed of?
This was the element that bore him up and into which Maggie scattered, on occasion, her exquisite colouring drops.