Mr Bevan found no chance for a tête-à-tête with his fiancée again that night, perhaps because he did not seek one; he was not in the humour for love-making. He felt—to use the good old nursery term that applies so often, so very often, to grown-ups—"fractious."

He retired to his bedroom at half-past eleven, and was sitting with an unlit cigarette in his mouth, staring at the wood-fire brightly burning in his grate, when a knock came to the door and Lambert appeared.

"I just dropped in to say good-night. Am I disturbing you?"

"Not a bit; sit down and have a cigarette."

Mr Lambert helped himself to a Marcovitch from a box on the table, drew up an easy-chair to the fire and sank into it with a sigh.

"It seems funny," said he in a meditative tone, "that I should be sitting here smoking and yarning with you to-night, and only[Pg 236] yesterday, so to speak, we were fighting like bull-dogs; but we're friends now, and you must come and see me when you're back in town. You live in the 'Albany'? I had rooms there once, years ago—years ago. Lord! what a change has come over London since the days when Evans' was stuffed of a night with all manner of people—the rows and ructions I remember! The things that went on. One night in Evans' I remember an old gentleman coming in and ordering a chop, and no sooner had he put on his spectacles and settled down to it with a smile all over his face, than Bob O'Grady, of the 10th—Black O'Grady—who'd been watching him—he was drunk as a lord—rose up and said, ''Scuse me,' he said, and took the chop by the shank-bone and flung it on the stage. A man could take his whack in those days, and be none the worse for it; but men are different, somehow, now, and they go in for tea and muffins and nerves just as the women used to, when I was twenty; and the women, begad, are the best men now'days. Look at Miss Pursehouse! as charming as a woman and as clever as a man. Look at this house of hers! One would[Pg 237] think a man owned it, everything is so well done: brandies and sodas at your elbows, matches all over the place, and electric bells and a telephone. That's the sort of woman for me—not that I'm not fond of the old-fashioned sort of woman too. Fanny, my daughter—I must introduce you to her—is as old-fashioned as they make 'em. Screeches if she sees a rat, and knows nothing of woman's rights or the higher education of females, and is always ready to turn on the water-works, bless her heart! ready and willing to cry over anything you may put before her that's got the ghost of a cry in it. But, bless you! what's the good of talking about old-fashioned or modern women? From Hecuba down, they're all the same—born to deceive us and make our lives happy."

"Can't see how a woman that deceives a man can make him happy."

"My dear fellow, sure, what's happiness but illusion, and what's illusion but deception, and talking about deception, aren't men—the blackguards!—just as bad at deceiving as women?"

Mr Bevan made no reply to this; he shifted uneasily in his chair.

"You live at Highgate?" he said.

[Pg 238]

Lambert woke up from a reverie he had fallen into with a start.

"Yes, bad luck to it! I've got a house there I can't get rid of, and, talking of old-fashioned things, it's an old-fashioned house. There aren't any electric bells, and if there were you'd as likely as not ring up the ghost. For there's a ghost there, sure enough; she nearly frightened the gizzard out of my butler James."

He leaned back luxuriously in his chair, blowing cigarette rings at the fire, whilst Charles Bevan mentally recalled the vision of "My butler James."

He could not but admit that Lambert carried his poverty exceedingly well, and with a much better grace than that with which many men carry their wealth. The impression that Fanny Lambert had made upon him was not effaced in any way by the impression made upon him by her father. Lambert was not an impossible man. Wildly extravagant he might be, and reckless to the verge of lunacy, but he was a gentleman; and in saying the word "gentleman," my dear sir or madam I do not refer to birth. There lives many a hideous bounder who yet can fling his[Pg 239] great-great-great-grandfather at your head, and many a noble-minded gentleman, the present or past existence of whose father is demonstrable only by the logic of physiology.

Lambert went off to his room at twelve, and Mr Bevan passed a broken night. He dreamt of lawyers and sunflowers. He dreamt that he saw old Francis, the village lunatic, waiting at the cross-roads; and when he asked him what he was waiting for, Francis replied that he was waiting to see his (Mr Bevan's) marriage procession go by: a dream which was scarcely a hopeful omen, considering the object of the old man's daily vigil as revealed by Lulu Morgan.

He came down to breakfast late. His hostess did not appear, and Miss Morgan announced that her friend was suffering from tic-douloureux.

"'S far as I can make out, it's like having the grippe in one eye. I've physicked her with Bile Beans and Perry Davis, and I've sent for some Antikamnia. If she's not better by luncheon I'll send for the doctor."

She was not down by luncheon. After that meal, Charles, strolling across the hall to the[Pg 240] billiard-room, felt something pluck at his sleeve. It was Miss Morgan.

"I want to speak to you alone for a minute," said she. "Come into the garden; there's no one there."

He followed her, much wondering, and they passed down a shady path till they lost sight of the house.

"Pamela's worried," said Lulu, "and I want to talk to you a............