At last came the day on which the two Claverings were to go down to Harwich and put themselves on board Jack Stuart\'s yacht. The hall of the house in Berkeley Square was strewed with portmanteaus, gun-cases, and fishing-rods, whereas the wine and packets of preserved meat, and the bottled beer and fish in tins, and the large box of cigars, and the prepared soups, had been sent down by Boxall, and were by this time on board the boat. Hugh and Archie were to leave London this day by train at 5 P.M., and were to sleep on board. Jack Stuart was already there, having assisted in working the yacht round from Brightlingsea.

On that morning Archie had a farewell breakfast at his club with Doodles, and after that, having spent the intervening hours in the billiard-room, a farewell luncheon. There had been something of melancholy in this last day between the friends, originating partly in the failure of Archie\'s hopes as to Lady Ongar, and partly perhaps in the bad character which seemed to belong to Jack Stuart and his craft. "He has been at it for years, and always coming to grief," said Doodles. "He is just like a man I know, who has been hunting for the last ten years, and can\'t sit a horse at a fence yet. He has broken every bone in his skin, and I don\'t suppose he ever saw a good thing to a finish. He never knows whether hounds are in cover, or where they are. His only idea is to follow another man\'s red coat till he comes to grief;—and yet he will go on hunting. There are some people who never will understand what they can do, and what they can\'t." In answer to this, Archie reminded his friend that on this occasion Jack Stuart would have the advantage of an excellent dry-nurse, acknowledged to be very great on such occasions. Would not he, Archie Clavering, be there to pilot Jack Stuart and his boat? But, nevertheless, Doodles was melancholy, and went on telling stories about that unfortunate man who would continue to break his bones, though he had no aptitude for out-of-door sports. "He\'ll be carried home on a stretcher some day, you know," said Doodles.

"What does it matter if he is?" said Archie, boldly, thinking of himself and of the danger predicted for him. "A man can only die once."

"I call it quite a tempting of Providence," said Doodles.

But their conversation was chiefly about Lady Ongar and the Spy. It was only on this day that Doodles had learned that Archie had in truth offered his hand, and been rejected; and Captain Clavering was surprised by the extent of his friend\'s sympathy. "It\'s a doosed disagreeable thing,—a very disagreeable thing indeed," said Doodles. Archie, who did not wish to be regarded as specially unfortunate, declined to look at the matter in this light; but Doodles insisted. "It would cut me up like the very mischief," he said. "I know that; and the worst of it is, that perhaps you wouldn\'t have gone on, only for me. I meant it all for the best, old fellow. I did, indeed. There; that\'s the game to you. I\'m playing uncommon badly this morning; but the truth is, I\'m thinking of those women." Now as Doodles was playing for a little money, this was really civil on his part.

And he would persevere in talking about the Spy, as though there were something in his remembrance of the lady which attracted him irresistibly to the subject. He had always boasted that in his interview with her he had come off with the victory, nor did he now cease to make such boasts; but still he spoke of her and her powers with an awe which would have completely opened the eyes of any one a little more sharp on such matters than Archie Clavering. He was so intent on this subject that he sent the marker out of the room so that he might discuss it with more freedom, and might plainly express his views as to her influence on his friend\'s fate.

"By George! she\'s a wonderful woman. Do you know I can\'t help thinking of her at night. She keeps me awake;—she does, upon my honour."

"I can\'t say she keeps me awake, but I wish I had my seventy pounds back again."

"Do you know, if I were you, I shouldn\'t grudge it. I should think it worth pretty nearly all the money to have had the dealing with her."

"Then you ought to go halves."

"Well, yes;—only that I ain\'t flush, I would. When one thinks of it, her absolutely taking the notes out of your waistcoat-pocket, upon my word it\'s beautiful! She\'d have had it out of mine, if I hadn\'t been doosed sharp."

"She understood what she was about, certainly."

"What I should like to know is this: did she or did she not tell Lady Ongar what she was to do;—about you I mean? I daresay she did after all."

"And took my money for nothing?"

"Because you didn\'t go high enough, you know."

"But that was your fault. I went as high as you told me."

"No, you didn\'t, Clavvy; not if you remember. But the fact is, I don\'t suppose you could go high enough. I shouldn\'t be surprised if such a woman as that wanted—thousands! I shouldn\'t indeed. I shall never forget the way in which she swore at me;—and how she abused me about my family. I think she must have had some special reason for disliking Warwickshire, she said such awful hard things about it."

"How did she know that you came from Warwickshire?"

"She did know it. If I tell you something don\'t you say anything about it. I have an idea about her."

"What is it?"

"I didn\'t mention it before, because I don\'t talk much of those sort of things. I don\'t pretend to understand them, and it is better to leave them alone."

"But what do you mean?"

Doodles looked very solemn as he answered. "I think she\'s a medium—or a media, or whatever it ought to be called."

"What! one of those spirit-rapping people?" And Archie\'s hair almost stood on end as he asked the question.

"They don\'t rap now,—not the best of them, that is. That was the old way, and seems to have been given up."

"But what do you suppose she did?"

"How did she know that the money was in your waistcoat-pocket, now? How did she know that I came from Warwickshire? And then she had a way of going about the room as though she could have raised herself off her feet in a moment if she had chosen. And then her swearing, and the rest of it,—so unlike any other woman, you know."

"But do you think she could have made Julia hate me?"

"Ah, I can\'t tell that. There are such lots of things going on now-a-days that a fellow can understand nothing about! But I\'ve no doubt of this,—if you were to tie her up with ropes ever so, I don\'t in the least doubt but what she\'d get out."

Archie was awe-struck, and made two or three strokes after this; but then he plucked up his courage and asked a question,—

"Where do you suppose they get it from, Doodles?"

"That\'s just the question."

"Is it from—the devil, do you think?" said Archie, whispering the name of the Evil One in a very low voice.

"Well, yes; I suppose that\'s most likely."

"Because they don\'t seem to do a great deal of harm with it after all. As for my money, she would have had that any way, for I intended to give it to her."

"There are people who think," said Doodles, "that the spirits don\'t come from anywhere, but are always floating about."

"And then one person catches them, and another doesn\'t?" asked Archie.

"They tell me that it depends upon what the mediums or medias eat and drink," said Doodles, "and upon what sort of minds they have. They must be cleverish people, I fancy, or the spirits wouldn\'t come to them."

"But you never hear of any swell being a medium. Why don\'t the spirits go to a prime minister or some of those fellows? Only think what a help they\'d be."

"If they come from the devil," suggested Doodles, "he wouldn\'t let them do any real good."

"I\'ve heard a deal about them," said Archie, "and it seems to me that the mediums are always poor people, and that they come from nobody knows where. The Spy is a clever woman I daresay—"

"There isn\'t much doubt about that," said the admiring Doodles.

"But you can\'t say she\'s respectable, you know. If I was a spirit I wouldn\'t go to a woman who wore such dirty stockings as she had on."

"That\'s nonsense, Clavvy. What does a spirit care about a woman\'s stockings?"

"But why don\'t they ever go to the wise people? that\'s what I want to know." And as he asked the question boldly he struck his ball sharply, and, lo, the three balls rolled vanquished into three different pockets. "I don\'t believe about it," said Archie, as he readjusted the score. "The devil can\'t do such things as that or there\'d be an end of everything; and as to spirits in the air, why should there be more spirits now than there were four-and-twenty years ago?"

"That\'s all very well, old fellow," said Doodles, "but you and I ain\'t clever enough to understand everything." Then that subject was dropped, and Doodles went back for a while to the perils of Jack Stuart\'s yacht.

After the lunch, which was in fact Archie\'s early dinner, Doodles was going to leave his friend, but Archie insisted that his brother captain should walk with him up to Berkeley Square, and see the last of him into his cab. Doodles had suggested that Sir Hugh would be there, and that Sir Hugh was not always disposed to welcome his brother\'s friends to his own house after the most comfortable modes of friendship; but Archie explained that on such an occasion as this there need be no fear on that head; he and his brother were going away together, and there was a certain feeling of jollity about the trip which would divest Sir Hugh of his roughness. "And besides," said Archie, "as you will be there to see me off, he\'ll know that you\'re not going to stay yourself." Convinced by this, Doodles consented to walk up to Berkeley Square.

Sir Hugh had spent the greatest part of this day at home, immersed among his guns and rods, and their various appurtenances. He also had breakfasted at his club, but had ordered his luncheon to be prepared for him at home. He had arranged to leave Berkeley Square at four, and had directed that his lamb chops should be brought to him exactly at three. He was himself a little late in coming downstairs, and it was ten minutes past the hour when he desired that the chops might be put on the table, saying that he himself would be in the drawing-room in time to meet them. He was a man solicitous about his lamb chops, and careful that the asparagus should be hot; solicitous also as to that bottle of Lafitte by which those comestibles were to be accompanied and which was, of its own nature, too good to be shared with his brother Archie. But as he was on the landing, by the drawing-room door, descending quickly, conscious that in obedience to his orders the chops had been already served, he was met by a servant who, with disturbed face and quick voice, told him that there was a lady waiting for him in the hall.

"D—— it!" said Sir Hugh.

"She has just come, Sir Hugh, and says that she specially wants to see you."

"Why the devil did you let her in?"

"She walked in when the door was opened, Sir Hugh, and I couldn\'t help it. She seemed to be a lady, Sir Hugh, and I didn\'t like not to let her inside the door."

"What\'s the lady\'s name?" asked the master.

"It\'s a foreign name, Sir Hugh. She said she wouldn\'t keep you five minutes." The lamb chops, and the asparagus, and the Lafitte were in the dining-room, and the only way to the dining-room lay through the hall to which the foreign lady had obtained an entrance. Sir Hugh, making such calculations as the moments allowed, determined that he would face the enemy, and pass on to his banquet over her prostrate body. He went quickly down into the hall, and there was encountered by Sophie Gordeloup, who, skipping over the gun-cases, and rushing through the portmanteaus, caught the baronet by the arm before he had been able to approach the dining-room door. "Sir \'Oo," she said, "I am so glad to have caught you. You are going away, and I have things to tell you which you must hear—yes; it is well for you I have caught you, Sir \'Oo." Sir Hugh looked as though he by no means participated in this feeling, and saying something about his great hurry begged that he might be allowed to go to his food. Then he added that, as far as his memory served him, he had not the honour of knowing the lady who was addressing him.

"You come in to your little dinner," said Sophie, "and I will tell you everything as you are eating. Don\'t mind me. You shall eat and drink, and I will talk. I am Madame Gordeloup,—Sophie Gordeloup. Ah,—you know the name now. Yes. That is me. Count Pateroff is my brother. You know Count Pateroff? He knowed Lord Ongar, and I knowed Lord Ongar. We know Lady Ongar. Ah,—you understand now that I can have much to tell. It is well you was not gone without seeing me? Eh; yes! You shall eat and drink, but suppose you send that man into the kitchen!"

Sir Hugh was so taken by surprise that he hardly knew how to act on the spur of the moment. He certainly had heard of Madame Gordeloup, though he had never before seen her. For years past her name had been familiar to him in London, and when Lady Ongar had returned as a widow it had been, to his thinking, one of her worst offences that this woman had been her friend. Under ordinary circumstances his judgment would have directed him to desire the servant to put her out into the street as an impostor, and to send for the police if there was any difficulty. But it certainly might be possible that this woman had something to tell with reference to Lady Ongar which it would suit his purposes to hear. At the present moment he was not very well inclined to his sister-in-law, and was disposed to hear evil of her. So he passed on into the dining-room and desired Madame Gordeloup to follow him. Then he closed the room door, and standing up with his back to the fireplace, so that he might be saved from the necessity of asking her to sit down, he declared himself ready to hear anything that his visitor might have to say.

"But you will eat your dinner, Sir \'Oo? You will not mind me. I shall not care."............