Oh; so you \'ave come to see me. I am so glad." With these words Sophie Gordeloup welcomed Harry Clavering to her room in Mount Street early one morning not long after her interview with Captain Archie in Lady Ongar\'s presence. On the previous evening Harry had received a note from Lady Ongar, in which she upbraided him for having left unperformed her commission with reference to Count Pateroff. The letter had begun quite abruptly. "I think it unkind of you that you do not come to me. I asked you to see a certain person on my behalf, and you have not done so. Twice he has been here. Once I was in truth out. He came again the next evening at nine, and I was then ill, and had gone to bed. You understand it all, and must know how this annoys me. I thought you would have done this for me, and I thought I should have seen you.—J." This note he found at his lodgings when he returned home at night, and on the following morning he went in his despair direct to Mount Street, on his way to the Adelphi. It was not yet ten o\'clock when he was shown into Madame Gordeloup\'s presence, and as regarded her dress he did not find her to be quite prepared for morning visitors. But he might well be indifferent on that matter, as the lady seemed to disregard the circumstances altogether. On her head she wore what he took to be a nightcap, though I will not absolutely undertake to say that she had slept in that very head-dress. There were frills to it, and a certain attempt at prettinesses had been made; but then the attempt had been made so long ago, and the frills were so ignorant of starch and all frillish propensities, that it hardly could pretend to decency. A great white wrapper she also wore, which might not have been objectionable had it not been so long worn that it looked like a university college surplice at the end of the long vacation. Her slippers had all the ease which age could give them, and above the slippers, neatness, to say the least of it, did not predominate. But Sophie herself seemed to be quite at her ease in spite of these deficiencies, and received our hero with an eager, pointed welcome, which I can hardly describe as affectionate, and which Harry did not at all understand.

"I have to apologize for troubling you," he began.

"Trouble, what trouble? Bah! You give me no trouble. It is you have the trouble to come here. You come early and I have not got my crinoline. If you are contented, so am I." Then she smiled, and sat herself down suddenly, letting herself almost fall into her special corner in the sofa. "Take a chair, Mr. Harry; then we can talk more comfortable."

"I want especially to see your brother. Can you give me his address?"

"What? Edouard—certainly; Travellers\' Club."

"But he is never there."

"He sends every day for his letters. You want to see him. Why?"

Harry was at once confounded, having no answer. "A little private business," he said.

"Ah; a little private business. You do not owe him a little money, I am afraid, or you would not want to see him. Ha, ha! You write to him, and he will see you. There;—there is paper and pen and ink. He shall get your letter this day."

Harry, nothing suspicious, did as he was bid, and wrote a note in which he simply told the count that he was specially desirous of seeing him.

"I will go to you anywhere," said Harry, "if you will name a place."

We, knowing Madame Gordeloup\'s habits, may feel little doubt but that she thought it her duty to become acquainted with the contents of the note before she sent it out of her house, but we may also know that she learned very little from it.

"It shall go, almost immediately," said Sophie, when the envelope was closed.

Then Harry got up to depart, having done his work. "What, you are going in that way at once? You are in a hurry?"

"Well, yes; I am in a hurry, rather, Madame Gordeloup. I have got to be at my office, and I only just came up here to find out your brother\'s address." Then he rose and went, leaving the note behind him.

Then Madame Gordeloup, speaking to herself in French, called Harry Clavering a lout, a fool, an awkward overgrown boy, and a pig. She declared him to be a pig nine times over, then shook herself in violent disgust, and after that betook herself to the letter.

The letter was at any rate duly sent to the count, for before Harry had left Mr. Beilby\'s chambers on that day, Pateroff came to him there. Harry sat in the same room with other men, and therefore went out to see his acquaintance in a little antechamber that was used for such purposes. As he walked from one room to the other, he was conscious of the delicacy and difficulty of the task before him, and the colour was high in his face as he opened the door. But when he had done so, he saw that the count was not alone. A gentleman was with him, whom he did not introduce to Harry, and before whom Harry could not say that which he had to communicate.

"Pardon me," said the count, "but we are in railroad hurry. Nobody ever was in such a haste as I and my friend. You are not engaged to-morrow? No, I see. You dine with me and my friend at the Blue Posts. You know the Blue Posts?"

Harry said he did not know the Blue Posts.

"Then you shall know the Blue Posts. I will be your instructor. You drink claret. Come and see. You eat beefsteaks. Come and try. You love one glass of port wine with your cheese. No. But you shall love it when you have dined with me at the Blue Posts. We will dine altogether after the English way;—which is the best way in the world when it is quite good. It is quite good at the Blue Posts;—quite good! Seven o\'clock. You are fined when a minute late; an extra glass of port wine a minute. Now I must go. Ah; yes. I am ruined already."

Then Count Pateroff, holding his watch in his hand, bolted out of the room before Harry could say a word to him.

He had nothing for it but to go to the dinner, and to the dinner he went. On that same evening, the evening of the day on which he had seen Sophie and her brother, he wrote to Lady Ongar, using to her the same manner of writing that she had used to him, and telling her that he had done his best, that he had now seen him whom he had been desired to see, but that he had not been able to speak to him. He was, however, to dine with him on the following day,—and would call in Bolton Street as soon as possible after that interview.

Exactly at seven o\'clock, Harry, having the fear of the threatened fine before his eyes, was at the Blue Posts; and there, standing in the middle of the room, he saw Count Pateroff. With Count Pateroff was the same gentleman whom Harry had seen at the Adelphi, and whom the count now introduced as Colonel Schmoff; and also a little Englishman with a knowing eye and a bull-dog neck, and whiskers cut very short and trim,—a horsey little man, whom the count also introduced. "Captain Boodle; says he knows a cousin of yours, Mr. Clavering."

Then Colonel Schmoff bowed, never yet having spoken a word in Harry\'s hearing, and our old friend Doodles with glib volubility told Harry how intimate he was with Archie, and how he knew Sir Hugh, and how he had met Lady Clavering, and how "doosed" glad he was to meet Harry himself on this present occasion.

"And now, my boys, we\'ll set down," said the count. "There\'s just a little soup, printanier; yes, they can make soup here; then a cut of salmon; and after that the beefsteak. Nothing more. Schmoff, my boy, can you eat beefsteak?"

Schmoff neither smiled nor spoke, but simply bowed his head gravely, and sitting down, arranged with slow exactness his napkin over his waistcoat and lap.

"Captain Boodle, can you eat beefsteak," said the count; "Blue Posts\' beefsteak?"

"Try me," said Doodles. "That\'s all. Try me."

"I will try you, and I will try Mr. Clavering. Schmoff would eat a horse if he had not a bullock, and a piece of a jackass if he had not a horse."

"I did eat a horse in Hamboro\' once. We was besieged."

So much said Schmoff, very slowly, in a deep bass voice, speaking from the bottom of his chest, and frowning very heavily as he did so. The exertion was so great that he did not repeat it for a considerable time.

"Thank God we are not besieged now," said the count, as the soup was handed round to them. "Ah, Albert, my friend, that is good soup; very good soup. My compliments to the excellent Stubbs. Mr. Clavering, the excellent Stubbs is the cook. I am quite at home here and they do their best for me. You need not fear you will have any of Schmoff\'s horse."

This was all very pleasant, and Harry Clavering sat down to his dinner prepared to enjoy it; but there was a sense about him during the whole time that he was being taken in and cheated, and that the count would cheat him and actually escape away from him on that evening without his being able to speak a word to him. They were dining in a public room, at a large table which they had to themselves, while others were dining at small tables round them. Even if Schmoff and Boodle had not been there, he could hardly have discussed Lady Ongar\'s private affairs in such a room as that. The count had brought him there to dine in this way with a premeditated purpose of throwing him over, pretending to give him the meeting that had been asked for, but intending that it should pass by and be of no avail. Such was Harry\'s belief, and he resolved that, though he might have to seize Pateroff by the tails of his coat, the count should not escape him without having been forced at any rate to hear what he had to say. In the meantime the dinner went on very pleasantly.

"Ah," said the count, "there is no fish like salmon early in the year; but not too early. And it should come alive from Grove, and be cooked by Stubbs."

"And eaten by me," said Boodle.

"Under my auspices," said the count, "and then all is well. Mr. Clavering, a little bit near the head? Not care about any particular part? That is wrong. Everybody should always learn what is the best to eat of everything, and get it if they can."

"By George, I should think so," said Doodles. "I know I do."

"Not to know the bit out of the neck of the salmon from any other bit, is not to know a false note from a true one. Not to distinguish a \'51 wine from a \'58, is to look at an arm or a leg on the canvas, and to care nothing whether it is in drawing, or out of drawing. Not to know Stubbs\' beefsteak from other beefsteaks, is to say that every woman is the same thing to you. Only, Stubbs will let you have his beefsteak if you will pay him,—him or his master. With the beautiful woman it is not always so;—not always. Do I make myself understood?"

"Clear as mud," said Doodles. "I\'m quite along with you there. Why should a man be ashamed of eating what\'s nice? Everybody does it."

"No, Captain Boodle; not everybody. Some cannot get it, and some do not know it when it comes in their way. They are to be pitied. I do pity them from the bottom of my heart. But there is one poor fellow I do pity more even than they."

There was something in the tone of the count\'s words,—a simple pathos, and almost a melody, which interested Harry Clavering. No one knew better than Count Pateroff how to use all the inflexions of his voice, and produce from the phrases he used the very highest interest which they were capable of producing. He now spoke of his pity in a way that might almost have made a sensitive man weep. "Who is it that you pity so much?" Harry asked.

"The man who cannot digest," said the count, in a low clear voice. Then he bent down his head over the morsel of food on his plate, as though he were desirous of hiding a tea............