While Mr. Hawkehurst was talking to Mr. Sheldon's stepdaughter, Captain Paget had contrived to make himself very agreeable to that gentleman himself. Lord Lytton has said that "there is something strange and almost mesmerical in the _rapport_ between two evil natures. Bring two honest men together, and it is ten to one if they recognise each other as honest; differences in temper, manner, even politics, may make each misjudge the other. But bring together two men unprincipled and perverted--men who, if born in a cellar, would have been food for the hulks or gallows--and they understand each other by instant sympathy." However this might be with these two men, they had speedily become upon very easy terms with each other. Mr. Sheldon's plans for the making of money were very complicated in their nature, and he had frequent need of clever instruments to assist in the carrying out of his arrangements. Horatio Paget was the exact type of man most likely to be useful to such a speculator as Philip Sheldon. He was the very ideal of the "Promoter," the well-dressed, well-mannered gentleman, beneath whose magic wand new companies arise as if by magic; the man who, without a sixpence in his own pocket, can set a small Pactolus flowing from the pockets of other people; the man who, content himself to live in a humble second floor at Chelsea, can point to gigantic hotels which are as the palaces of a new Brobdignag, and say, "Lo, these arose at my bidding!" Mr. Sheldon was always on the alert to discover anything or anybody likely to serve his own interest, either in the present or the future; and he came to the conclusion that Miss Paget's father was a person upon whom an occasional dinner might not be altogether thrown away. "Take a chop with us to-morrow at six," he said, on parting from the Captain, "and then you can hear the two girls play and sing. They play remarkably well, I believe, from what other people tell me; but I am not a musical man myself." Horatio Paget accepted the invitation as cordially as it was given. It is astonishing how genial and friendly these men of the world can be at the slightest imaginable notice. One can fancy the striped tigers of Bengal shaking paws in the jungle, the vultures hob-nobbing in a mountain cleft over the torn carcass of a stag, the kites putting their beaks together after dining on a nest of innocent doves. "Then we shall expect to see you at sharp six," said Mr. Sheldon, "and your friend Mr. Hawkehurst with you, of course." After this the two gentlemen departed. Valentine shook hands with Diana, and took a more ceremonious leave of Charlotte. George Sheldon threw away his chewed geranium-stalk in order to bid good evening to the visitors; and the little party walked to the garden-gate together.