For Neergard cared only for the notorious in the social scheme; nothing
else appealed to him. He had, all his life, read with avidity of the
extravagances, the ostentation, the luxurious effrontery, the thinly
veiled viciousness of what he believed to be society, and he craved it
from the first, working his thick hands to the bone in dogged
determination to one day participate in and satiate himself with the
easy morality of what he read about in his penny morning paper--in the
days when even a penny was to be carefully considered.
That was what he wanted from society--the best to be had in vice. That
was why he had denied himself in better days. It was for that he hoarded
every cent while actual want sharpened his wits and his thin nose; it
was in that hope that he received Selwyn so cordially as a possible
means of entrance into regions he could not attain unaided; it was for
that reason he was now binding Gerald to him through remission of
penalties for slackness, through loans and advances, through a
companionship which had already landed him in the Ruthven's card-room,
and promised even more from Mr.
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