"I do not expect you to get into one willingly, mind. _That's_ not what I mean: but sometimes we fall into pits through other people. If ever you do, though it were years to come, bring the trouble to me." And I promised, and went, according to the invitation, to dine with him in the evening. He had found his nephew: a plain young medical student, with a thin voice like himself. Mr. Brandon dined off boiled scrag of mutton; I and the nephew had soup and fish and fowl and plum pudding. After that evening I did not see anything more of old Brandon. Upon calling at the Tavistock they said he had left for the rest of the week, but would be back on the following Monday. And it was on the following Monday that Tod's affairs came to a climax. * * * * * We had had a regal entertainment. Fit for regal personages--as it seemed to us simple country people, inexperienced in London dinner giving. Mrs. Pell headed her table in green gauze, gold beetles in her hair, and a feathered-fan dangling. Mr. Pell, who had come to town for the party, faced her; the two girls, the two sons, and the guests were dispersed on either side. Eighteen of us in all. Crayton was there as large as life, and of the other people I did not know all the names. The dinner was given for some great gun who had to do with railway companies. He kept it waiting twenty minutes, and then loomed in with a glistening bald head, and a yellow rose in his coat: his wife, a very little woman in pink, on his arm. "I saw your father yesterday," called out Pell down the table to Tod. "He said he was glad to hear you were enjoying yourselves." "Ah--yes--thank you," replied Tod, in a hesitating sort of way. I don't know what _he_ was thinking of; but it flashed into my mind that the Squire would have been anything but "glad," had he known about the cards, and the billiards, and the twenty-five-pound debt. Dinner came to an end at last, and we found a few evening guests in the drawing-room--mostly young ladies. Some of the dinner people went away. The railway man sat whispering with Pell in a corner: his wife nodded asleep, and woke up to talk by fits and starts. The youngest girl, Rose, who was in the drawing-room with Leonora and the governess, ran up to me. "Please let me be your partner, Mr. Ludlow! They are going to dance a quadrille in the back drawing-room." So I took her, and we had the quadrille. Then another, that I danced with Constance. Tod was not to be seen anywhere. "I wonder what has become of Todhetley?" "He has gone out with Gusty and Mr. Crayton, I think," answered Constance. "It is too bad of them." By one o'clock all the people had left; the girls and Mrs. Pell said good night and disappeared. In going up to bed, I met one of the servants. "Do you know what time Mr. Todhetley went out, Richard?"