"The lucky person, as you call her, is Mrs. Gregory Lamb. Harry, they say that in England the duelling days are over. They may be--that is, so far as so-called 'affairs of honour' are concerned--but for duels of another sort the day is never over. I am going to engage in a duel with Mrs. Gregory Lamb. You and Dr. Twelves here will be my seconds. I shall need all the assistance that seconds may honourably give to their principal, for it will be a duel to the death." CHAPTER XXIV THE INTERIOR Rather a curious state of things prevailed in Mrs. Lamb's residence in Connaught Square. The largest and best regulated establishments are apt to be disorganised when festival has been kept the night before--that is true enough. But in this case the disorganisation was something altogether out of the common. Mr. Lamb, who never attended his wife's receptions, and so pleased himself and the lady, had come home with the milk, just sober enough to wonder why the place was in such a state of singular confusion. The servants seemed to be occupying the reception rooms, enjoying themselves in a fashion in which servants are not supposed to do. He had a vague recollection of having a drink with a footman or some such menial while endeavouring to ascertain what was the meaning of the proceedings, and of pledging a housemaid's health in what he was convinced was a glass of his wife's champagne. But as, later, he was only too glad to be assisted upstairs by any one and every one, his memory of what took place was scarcely to be relied upon. His wife had shut herself in her room, constraining her guests to take their departure without affording them an opportunity of saying good-bye to their hostess, and offering her their thanks for a very pleasant evening. Exactly what occurred behind that locked door she alone knew. When her senses returned she was still in her splendour of the previous night. She half lay, half sat, upon her boudoir floor, with her head upon a couch. A broken wine-glass was at her side. A decanter which had held ether was overturned on a buhl table. The day streamed through the windows. It was some seconds before she recognised these facts. Then she rose to her feet and looked about her. The first thing she did was to go to the boudoir door and try if it was locked. When she found that it was, and that the key was nicely adjusted in the keyhole, so as to prevent any one peeping in from without, she strode through another door, which stood ajar, into her bedroom, which adjoined. She tried the outer door of that, to find that it also was locked. She glanced at a silver clock which stood upon the mantelpiece. According to it the time was twenty minutes to one, so that more than half of the day had already gone. Then she went to a cheval glass, which mirrored her from head to foot, and glanced at herself.