There was something in Isabella's tone that betokened a readiness, or perhaps a desire, to fight Mr. Devar's battles. Had I been a woman, or wiser than I have ever proved myself, I should, no doubt, have ignored this challenge instead of promptly meeting it by my answer: "I cannot say he does." "You seem to object to him," she said sharply. "Please remember that he is a friend of mine." "He cannot be one of long standing," I was foolish enough to answer. "For he is not an East Country man, and I never heard of him before." "As a matter of fact," said Isabella, "I met him at a ball in town last week, and he asked permission to call." I gave a short laugh, and Isabella looked at me with calm defiance in her eyes. It was, of course, no business of mine, which knowledge probably urged me on to further blunders. Isabella's mental attitude was a puzzle to me. She was ready enough to supply information respecting Mr. Devar, whose progress towards intimacy had, to say the least of it, been rapid. But she supplied, as I thought, from a small store. She alternately allayed and aroused an anxiety which was natural enough in so old a friend, and to a man who had moved among adventurers nearly all his life. Alfred Gayerson, her brother and my earliest friend, was now in Vienna. Isabella had no one to advise her. She was, I suppose, a forerunner of the advanced young women of to-day, who, with a diminutive knowledge of the world culled from the imaginative writings of females as ignorant, are pleased to consider themselves competent to steer a clean course over the shoals of life. Isabella had had, as I understood, a certain experience of the ordinary fortune-hunters of society--pleasant enough fellows, no doubt, but lacking self-respect and manhood--and it seemed extraordinary that her eyes should be closed to Mr. Devar's manifold qualifications to the title. "Perhaps," she said at length, "you also will do us the pleasure of dining with us on Thursday, as you appear to be so deeply interested in Mr. Devar despite your assurances to the contrary." "I shall be most happy to do so," answered I--ungraciously, I fear--and there arose a sudden light, almost of triumph, to her usually repressed glance. Alphonse Giraud acceded to my suggestion that he should walk with me towards my club. His manner towards me had been reserved and unnatural, and I wished to get to the bottom of his feeling in respect to one whom he had always treated as a friend. Isabella was the only person to suggest an objection to my proposal, reminding Alphonse, rather pointedly, that he had but time to dress for dinner. "Well," I said, when we were turning into Piccadilly, "Miste has begun to give us a scent at last." "It is not so much in Monsieur Miste as in the money that I am interested," answered Giraud, swinging his cane, and looking about him with a simulated interest in his surroundings. "Ah!" "Yes; and I am beginning to be convinced that I shall never see either."