“Why, what’s the matter with you, Tony?” inquires Mr Guppy, looking at him, snuffers in hand, as he sits down with his elbow on the table.

“William Guppy,” replies the other, “I am in the Downs. It’s this unbearably dull, suicidal room — and old Boguey down-stairs, I suppose.” Mr Weevle moodily pushes the snuffer-tray from him with his elbow, leans his head on his hand, puts his feet on the fender, and looks at the fire. Mr Guppy, observing him, slightly tosses his head, and sits down on the other side of the table in an easy attitude.

“Wasn’t that Snagsby talking to you, Tony?”

“Yes, and be—yes, it was Snagsby,” said Mr Weevle, altering the construction of his sentence.

“On business?”

“No. No business. He was only sauntering by, and stopped to prose.”

“I thought it was Snagsby,” says Mr Guppy, “and thought it as well that he shouldn’t see me; so I waited till he was gone.”

“There we go again, William G.!” cried Tony, looking up for an instant. “So mysterious and secret! By George, if we were going to commit a murder, we couldn’t have more mystery about it!”

Mr Guppy affects to smile; and with the view of changing the conversation, looks with an admiration, real or pretended, round the room at the Galaxy gallery of British beauty; terminating his survey with the portrait of Lady Dedlock over the mantel-shelf, in which she is represented on a terrace, with a pedestal upon the terrace, and a vase upon the pedestal, and her shawl upon the vase, and a prodigious piece of fur upon the shawl, and her arm on the prodigious piece of fur, and a bracelet on her arm.

“That’s very like Lady Dedlock,” says Mr Guppy. “It’s a speaking likeness.”

“I wish it was,” growls Tony, without changing his position. “I should have some fashionable conversation, here, then.”

Finding, by this time, that his friend is not to be wheedled into a more sociable humour, Mr Guppy puts about upon the ill-used tack, and remonstrates with him.

“Tony,” says he, “I can make allowances for lowness of spirits, for no man knows what it is when it does come upon a man, better than I do; and no man perhaps has a better right to know it, than a man who has an unrequited image imprinted on his art. But there are bounds to these things when an unoffending party is in question, and I will acknowledge to you, Tony, that I don’t think your manner on the present occasion is hospitable or quite gentlemanly.”

“This is strong language, William Guppy,” returns Mr Weevle.

“Sir, it may be,” retorts Mr William Guppy, “but I feel strongly when I use it.”

Mr Weevle admits that he has been wrong, and begs Mr William Guppy to think no more about it. Mr William Guppy, however, having got the advantage, cannot quite release it without a little more injured remonstrance.

“No! Dash it, Tony,” says that gentleman, “you really ought to be careful how you wound the feelings of a man, who has an unrequited image imprinted on his art, and who is not altogether happy in those chords which vibrate to the tenderest emotions. You, Tony, possess in yourself all that is calculated to charm the eye, and allure the taste. It is not — happily for you, perhaps, and I may wish that I could say the same — it is not your character to hover around one flower. The ole garden is open to you,