“If you really wish me to constitute myself your Mentor, you must allow me more opportunities of enjoying your society than I have hitherto possessed, and then, from time to time, I dare say I may be able to give you a few hints which you may find practically beneficial; and as there is nothing like making use of the present occasion, what say you to allowing me to introduce you to a kind of private club, where I and a few of my particular set sometimes meet after the Opera, and while away an hour or two with a hand at whist or écarté, or exchange our ideas on the topics of the day over a game of billiards; the stakes are, of course, suited to the measure of our purses, my own being an uncomfortably shallow one. We are close to the entrance, shall we turn in?” After a moment’s hesitation, the result of an indefinite notion that he was about to do something wrong, Lord Alfred consented; and D’Almayne knocked at the door of what looked like a good private house. The portal unclosed, and immediately shut again by some mysterious agency, for, when they entered, no domestic was visible; and they proceeded along a passage to a second door covered with red baize, with a glass eye, placed Cyclop-like in the middle of its forehead, through which a human face observed them for a moment, then disappeared, and the red baize door opened and admitted them of its own accord, as the outer one had set it the example. Following his companion up a flight of stone stairs, at the top of which yet another baize door with a Cyclopian optic presented itself, Lord Alfred Courtland heard the sounds of laughing and conversation, and in another moment found himself in a large, well-lighted apartment, round which were dispersed sundry small tables, at which were seated, in groups of three or four, from a dozen to fifteen men, all of whom were recruiting exhausted nature with Champagne, pine-apple ice, or more substantial viands, if their tastes inclined them thereunto. Placing himself at an unoccupied table, D’Almayne inquired in his most insinuating tone--“Champagne, Claret, Johannisberg--what is your pet vanity, my lord?--_c’est affreux_, the inefficient ventilation of that Opera-house. I am positively famished with thirst, and must drown my enemy before Horace is himself again.”