if not the superior generalship, of the Analytical prevails over a man who is as nothing off the box; and the Coachman, yielding up his salver, retires defeated. Then, the Analytical, perusing a scrap of paper lying on the salver, with the air of a literary Censor, adjusts it, takes his time about going to the table with it, and presents it to Mr. Eugene Wrayburn. Whereupon the pleasant Tippins says aloud, “The Lord Chancellor has resigned!”

With distracting coolness and slowness — for he knows the curiosity of the Charmer to be always devouring — Eugene makes a pretence of getting out an eyeglass, polishing it, and reading the paper with difficulty, long after he has seen what is written on it. What is written on it in wet ink, is:

“Young Blight.”

“Waiting?” says Eugene over his shoulder, in confidence, with the Analytical.

“Waiting,” returns the Analytical in responsive confidence.

Eugene looks “Excuse me,” towards Mrs. Veneering, goes out, and finds Young Blight, Mortimer’s clerk, at the hall-door.

“You told me to bring him, sir, to wherever you was, if he come while you was out and I was in,” says that discreet young gentleman, standing on tiptoe to whisper; “and I’ve brought him.”

“Sharp boy. Where is he?” asks Eugene.

“He’s in a cab, sir, at the door. I thought it best not to show him, you see, if it could be helped; for he’s a-shaking all over, like —” Blight’s simile is perhaps inspired by the surrounding dishes of sweets — “like Glue Monge.”

“Sharp boy again,” returns Eugene. “I’ll go to him.”

Goes out straightway, and, leisurely leaning his arms on the open window of a cab in waiting, looks in at Mr. Dolls: who has brought his own atmosphere with him, and would seem from its odour to have brought it, for convenience of carriage, in a rum-cask.

“Now Dolls, wake up!”

“Mist Wrayburn? Drection! Fifteen shillings!”

After carefully reading the dingy scrap of paper handed to him, and as carefully tucking it into his waistcoat pocket, Eugene tells out the money; beginning incautiously by telling the first shilling into Mr. Dolls’s hand, which instantly jerks it out of window; and ending by telling the fifteen shillings on the seat.

“Give him a ride back to Charing Cross, sharp boy, and there get rid of him.”

Returning to the dining-room, and pausing for an instant behind the screen at the door, Eugene overhears, above the hum and clatter, the fair Tippins saying: “I am dying to ask him what he was called out for!”

“Are you?” mutters Eugene, “then perhaps if you can’t ask him, you’ll die. So I’ll be a benefactor to society, and go. A stroll and a cigar, and I can think this over. Think this over.” Thus, with a thoughtful face, he finds his hat and cloak, unseen of the Analytical, and goes his way.

THE END OF THE THIRD BOOK.