Mrs. Kettering, on the sofa, knew nothing of what Blanche was thinking about, not six feet from her--knew nothing about Charlie, struggling convulsively for life half-a-mile out at sea--knew nothing about the woman she had left to take charge of her town-house--a pattern of respectability, sobriety, and trustworthiness, then reeling out of “The Feathers,” as drunk as Chloë, to use an old Eton expression, highly derogatory to the character of Horace’s young and tender love, she who bounded from the bard’s classical advances like a frightened kid. Our Chloë, meanwhile, was grasping a door-key, and calling for gin, regardless that she had left a tallow-candle flaring close to a heap of shavings in the back scullery, that “the airy-gate,” as she called it, was “on the latch,” and there was nobody to answer the front door. This last piece of carelessness was the means of inflicting an additional disappointment on one who had already in her short life known troubles and disappointments more than enough. Mary Delaval had walked up to the grim lion-headed knocker with a weary step and heavy heart; but when her summons was again and again unheeded, and the chance of finding out even Mrs. Kettering’s address became hopeless, she moved away with the heavy, listless air of one who has shot the last arrow from the quiver without attaining the mark, and begins to doubt if courage and energy are indeed qualities of the slightest advantage to our welfare, and whether blind fortune is not the controller of all here below. The sun beat fiercely upon the pavement, and there was not a breath of air to refresh those arid gardens in the parched and dusty square--yet Mary put her thick, suffocating veil down before her face and quickened her pace as she went home from her hopeless errand; for to these inconveniences she was obliged to submit, because in the freest country in the world, and the most civilised capital in Europe, she was walking on foot, without a companion or a man-servant. “Gad, that’s a good-looking woman!” said Captain Lacquers to his friend, Sir Ascot Uppercrust; “fine-ish goer, too, but tires over the pavement. If it was not so cursedly hot, ‘Uppy,’ we might cross over and get a look at her.” “Women rather bore me,” replied Sir Ascot, who, being very young and a Body-guardsman, was of course _blasé_; “but I don’t mind, to oblige you,--only promise you won’t let her speak to me.” So, as Captain Lacquers turned up his moustaches, Sir Ascot went through the same pantomime, for practice against the time when his own should grow; and the couple sauntered carelessly on, and, by a dexterous manœuvre, came “right across the bows” of Mary Delaval.