He in due time made his appearance with Dr.Hortebise, who had volunteered to introduce him into good society.

Paul felt ill at ease; he had just come from the hands of a fashionable tailor, who, thanks to Mascarin's influence, had in forty-eight hours prepared an evening suit of such superior cut that the young man hardly knew himself in it.

Paul had suffered a good deal from conflicting emotions after the visit to Van Klopen's, and more than once regretted the adhesion that he had given to Mascarin's scheme; but a visit the next day from Hortebise, and the knowledge that the fashionable physician was one of the confederates, had reconciled him to the position he had promised to assume.
He was moreover struck with Flavia's charms, and dazzled with the accounts of her vast prospective fortune.

To him, Hortebise, gay, rich, and careless, seemed the incarnation of happiness, and contributed greatly to stifle the voice of Paul's conscience.

He would, however, perhaps have hesitated had he known what the locket contained that dangled so ostentatiously from the doctor's chain.
Before they reached the banker's door, driven in the doctor's elegant brougham, a similar one to which Paul mentally declared he would have, as soon as circumstances would permit, the young man's mentor spoke.
"Let me say a few words to you.