"Do you taunt me with my infirmities!" exclaimed Granger. "Taunt me--your jackal, your tool--with being sober! Have I not also something to induce me to sobriety? Your marriage means much to me. Almost as much as it does to you." And he regarded the other with a strange fixity of gaze. "Five thousand guineas?" said the Beau, interrogatively. "Humph!" "Ay--it means--well! just so. Gad! you see everything. You are a monstrous clever man." "So, so," said the Beau. "So, so. Anyway, I have brought my pigs to a good market. Eh?" "You have. In solemn truth, you have. Now, good-night. I shall be with you to-morrow to breakfast early. To bed. To bed." And with a nod he left the room. It was a wet, warm July night, or rather morning, for the summer dawn was coming as he left the house, yet he seemed in no hurry to seek his own bed, wherever it might happen to be. Instead, he peered up and down the street as though searching for a hackney carriage or chair; but, seeing none, walked fast up the Haymarket until he came to a night house which was still open, and in which were still many dissolute people of both sexes, drinking and carousing. Then he called for a dram, and ordering the woman who was waiting to bring pen, paper, and sand, sat down and wrote a short note--a note which, when he had sealed and addressed it to "Lord John Dallas," he dropped into his pocket, after which he paid his reckoning and went forth, finding now a chair and two men waiting for a fare outside. "Carry me," he said, "to Park Place. Then I shall need you to take me to King Street, Covent Garden. A crown will do your business, eh?" The men answering that it would, he stepped in, and they went off as fast as their state of semi-drunkenness (in which London chair-men generally were at that time in the morning) would allow, and eventually they reached Park Place, whereon, alighting, Lewis Granger walked down the narrow street regardless of the drizzle, until he stood before No. 13, when, taking from his pocket the letter he had written at the night house, he dropped it into the gaping dolphin's mouth in bronze which formed the entrance to the letter-box. "If Dallas loves his mother, as I have heard tell," he said to himself, "that should do his business, and prevent him from interrupting us to-morrow. Our hymeneal ceremony needs no disturbance--until it is over."