On reaching the hotel, according to appointment, Colin found Mr. Lupton seated in a private room up-stairs, with a table neatly spread for two beside him, but as yet containing nothing beyond the requisite materials for handling that dinner, which was brought up at the Squire's summons very shortly after his arrival. During their repast the young man could not avoid being continually reminded with what kind familiarity he was treated by his wealthy entertainer,--a degree of familiarity which seemed the more unaccountable to him, perhaps, simply because all his previous ideas of the manners of the higher classes of society had been derived almost solely from casual observation of that high bearing and seeming austerity of feeling, which sometimes exists in their common intercourse with the rustic inhabitants of a country district. To be sure, he had once rendered the Squire an essential service, by saving him from severe personal injury, if not possibly from a premature death; but that service he thought might be equally well rewarded without all this personal association with, and condescension to, one who possessed no qualifications save those which nature had given him, for admission into a kind of society of which, up to this time, he could not possibly know anything. But Mr. Lupton seemed to take pains even to render him easy in his new situation,--to make him at home, as it were, and cause him to feel himself as essentially upon a level in all things with himself. Though Colin could not account exactly for all this, it had its due effect upon him. By the time their meal was over, and at the Squire's most pressing solicitations he had imbibed various glasses of sherry during the repast, he found himself as much at liberty, both in limb and tongue, as though he had been seated in Miss Sowersoffs kitchen, with no higher company than herself and Palethorpe. As Mr. Lupton evinced considerable anxiety to know what had brought him to London, and Colin himself on his part felt no less desirous to explain every circumstance connected not only with himself, but also those bearing upon the infamous conduct of Doctor Rowel, touching the affair of Lawyer Skinwell and James Woodruff, two long after-dinner hours scarcely sufficed for the detail of a narrative which, in all its particulars, caused in the mind of Mr. Lupton the utmost astonishment.