The million pound banknote

I didn't worry about the bet. I had always been lucky. I estimated that I would be paid six hundred to a thousand pounds a year. Let us say that I might earn six hundred for the first year, and this would go up year by year, until I showed that I was worth a thousand a year. At present I only owed money for my first year's salary. Everybody had been trying to lend me money but I had always made up an excuse so that I did not need to take it. I only actually owed £300. The other £300 was money which I had used to buy things and for my food and a place to stay.

I believed that the money from my second year's salary would get me through the rest of the month - and I intended to make very sure that I went on being cautious and economical. When the month was over my employer would be back from his journey. Then I would be all right once more. I would immediately give up my next two years' salary to people whom I owed money, and get right down to my work.

It was a lovely dinner-party of fourteen. These were the Duke and Duchess of Shoreditch, and their daughter the Lady Anne-Grace-Eleanor-Celeste-and-so-forth-de-Bohun, the Earl and Countess of Newgate, Viscount Cheapside, Lord and Lady Blatherskite, There were also some men and women who were not aristocrats and the ambassador and his wife and daughter. The daughter had a friend who was visiting her, an English girl who was twenty-two years old. Her name was Portia Langham and I fell in love with her in two minutes. And she fell in love with me - I could see it clearly.