The Countess of Lowndes Square

ARTHUR WHATELY had known very well what it was like to be desperately poor, and inconsequence, when he became so desperately rich that money ceased to mean anything to him, hispity for the penurious was not hysterical or exaggerated. He could recall very vividly what it felt liketo have neither tea, dinner nor supper, and to wake in the morning, stiff and cold as armour, on abench on the Embankment and see the ridiculous needle of Cleopatra stonily pointing heavenwardsagainst the sky, in which the stars were beginning to burn dim at the chilly approach of day. He hadknown how icy the feet become when they have been close clasped all night long in the frayedembraces of gaping leather, but he had known also how sweet and surprising it is to eat when foodis imperiously demanded by the cravings of long-continued abstinence, and how ineffably luxuriousto get warm when limbs have ached themselves numb. He would have been willing to confess thatunveneered destitution had its inconveniences, but it was false sentiment to deny that it had itscompensations also. It was when he was just sixteen that Luck, the great veiled goddess whom all the world so wiselyworships, had paid him her first visit. He had been hanging about at the covered portico of theLyceum Theatre one night watching the well-fed world being lumpily deposited at the doors, when asilly old pink gentleman, in paying his cabman, dropped a promising pocket-book in the roadway. For one half-second the boy deliberated, wondering instinctively (though he had never heard of theproverb) if honesty was the best policy, in other words, how much the pocket-book contained, andhow much the foolish old gentleman would give him if he picked it up and returned it. A couple ofpence, perhaps, for he looked a coppery gent. But the debate lasted scarcely longer than it took the pocket-book to fall; in a moment his wisedecision was made, he had picked it up (recognizing in that delightful incident the smile of the greatgoddess), had dived under the Roman nose of the cab horse, and fled into the street where a chill, unpleasant rain was falling. Luck still smiled on him, for the night was foggy, and as soon as he hadcrossed the street he dropped into the habitual shuffling pace of the homeless, and returned to theportico which he had so lately quitted, since it was theoretically impossible that the thief should doanything so foolish