As Law had himself arrogantly announced, he was indeed a philosopher and a mathematician, young as he was; and these things Montague was himself keen enough to know.
It promised, then, to be a strange and interesting council, this which was to meet to-day at the Bank of England, to adjust the value of England's coinage; two philosophers, one pompous trimmer, and two gamblers; the younger and more daring of whom was now calmly threading the streets of London on his way to a meeting which might mean much to him.
To John Law, adventurer, mathematician, philosopher, gambler, it seemed a natural enough thing that he should be asked to sit at the council table with the ablest minds of the day and pass upon questions the most important.

This was not what gave him trouble.

This matter of the coinage, these questions of finance--they were easy.

But how to win the interest of the tall and gracious English girl whom he had met by chance that other morn, who had left no way open for a further meeting; how to gain access to the presence of that fair one--these were the questions which to John Law seemed of greater importance, and of greater difficulty in the answering.
The chair drew up at the somber quarters where the meeting had been set.
Law knew the place by instinct, even without seeing the double row of heavy-visaged London constabulary which guarded the entrance.

Here and there along the street were carriages and chairs, and multiplied conveyances of persons of consequence.