Little incidents of the kind are always allowed for in the calculations of an adventurer. The Marquis De Leuville, following the example of “ole Brer Fox” in the allegory, determined to “lay low an’ say nuffin.” When the Labouchere disclosures were forgotten, the scandal blown over, and the sportsmen of Carteret Street busy on the trail of some other quarry, the Marquis-who-was-not-a-Marquis and author-who-was-not-an-author made his reappearance. Invitations to garden-parties at the Priory, Kilburn, issued by a Mrs. Peters, descended like a shower of snow on newspaper offices. And those who accepted them were received at the Priory by a very affable, not to say merry, widow, who had very sensibly discarded the trappings and the suits of woe. This was Mrs. Peters, the owner of the house and grounds. And in these pleasant surroundings we found the Marquis installed. The game was a very pretty one. Mrs. Peters was the widow of a wealthy coach-builder. And in the chaste fastnesses of Kilburn she had thought to establish a _salon_. Here she would play the part of Madame Récamier to the Chateaubriand of a Bath Oliver! Quick to read between the lines, the journalists who had been induced to accept an invitation to the Priory were able now to piece together the whole story. The giddy relict of the deceased coach-builder was the founder of the “Marky’s” fortunes. Her cheque had paid for the French marquisate. The Marquis De Leuville was, indeed, a work of fiction conceived, constructed, and given to the public, by Mrs. Peters. And it was a work of fiction transcending in human interest anything in the same line which could be produced by Oliver or his “ghosts.” The _salon_ at Kilburn failed to fulfil the hopes of its promoters; Society—even society with a little “s”—fought shy of it. It was felt that Mrs. Peters as Madame Récamier and her protégé as Chateaubriand did less than justice to their several parts. A suite of rooms was then taken for the Marquis in Victoria Street, Westminster, somewhere opposite the Army and Navy Stores. Here the indomitable humbug gave receptions, issuing the invitations in his own name. At these receptions one met the most weird characters—the shy denizens of the fringe of Bohemia, ostracized clerics, unread authors, swashbucklers of doubtful nationality, but about whose character there could be no sort of doubt whatever.