“Equally sententious and amiable,” returned Frere; “but the truth is, I have promised Bracy (partly fancying you would like the fun), and go I must.” “I’ll accompany you then,” rejoined Lewis. “I’d make a greater sacrifice than that for you any day, old fellow. And now may I ask who is the lady to be victimised?” “An opulent widow, one Lady Lombard, ‘the interesting relict of a be-knighted pawnbroker,’ as Bracy calls her,” replied Frere. “_Who_ inquired Lewis, becoming suddenly interested. “Why, how now?” returned Frere, astonished at his friend’s impetuosity. Then repeating the name, he continued, “Do you know the lady?” “Yes, I do,” rejoined Lewis; “know her for a coarse-minded, purse-proud, wretched old woman!” “Phew!” whistled Frere. “May I ask how the good lady has been so fortunate as thus to have excited your bitter indignation against her?” “Never mind,” returned Lewis, rising hastily and walking to the window; “it is enough that I know her to be the character I have described.” “That’s odd now,” muttered Frere, soliloquising. “If I had not been acquainted with his ‘_antécêdens_’ as the French term it, nearly as well as I know my own, I should have fancied the late lamented Lombard had, in bygone hours, refused to negotiate some small loan for him, on the perishable security of personal clothing. He can’t have popped the question to the widow at one of the German watering-places, and encountered a negative?” “Frere, don’t mention my dislike of Lady Lombard to your facetious acquaintance,” observed Lewis, turning round. “I have no ambition to become a butt for his bad puns.” “Never fear, man, I’ll not betray your confidence,” returned Frere; “more particularly when, as in the present instance, I don’t happen to share it.” “Do you care to know?” asked Lewis. “Not by no manner of means, as the young lady said, when the parson asked her whether she was prepared to give up all the pomps and vanities of this wicked world,” returned Frere. “And now, as we have to be converted into Pagans before ten o’clock, suppose we start.” A quarter of an hour’s brisk walking brought them to Bracy’s lodgings, where they found that gentleman deeply immersed in study, with the fez which was to assist in changing Frere into a prince stuck rakishly on one side of his head. On perceiving his visitors he sprang from his seat, and making a low salaam, in the course of which performance the fez tumbled off and knocked down a candle, he exclaimed-- “Most illustrious brothers of the Sun, and first-cousins once removed of the Moon and all the stars, may your shadows never be less! You do me proud by honouring my poor dwelling with your seraphic presences!” “I see you have got the wherewithal to make Heathens of us,” returned Frere, pointing to the couple of Persian dresses which hung against the wall like a brace of Bluebeard’s headless wives.