What was still possible? One wild project occurred to him for a moment, but he laughed at it and dismissed it. It was that he should go boldly to Mrs. Lorraine herself, ask her plainly if she knew what cruel injury she was doing to this young wife, and force her to turn Lavender adrift. But what enterprise of the days of old romance could be compared with this mad proposal? To ride up to a castle, blow a trumpet, and announce that unless a certain lady were released forthwith death and destruction would begin,--all that was simple enough, easy and according to rule; but to go into a lady's drawing-room without an introduction, and request her to stop a certain flirtation,--that was a much more awful undertaking. But Ingram could not altogether dismiss this notion from his head. Mosenberg went on playing--no longer his practicing-pieces, but all manner of airs which he knew Ingram liked--while the small sallow man with the brown beard lay in his easy-chair and smoked his pipe, and gazed attentively at his toes on the fender. "You know Mrs. Kavanagh and her daughter, don't you, Mosenberg?" he said during an interval in the music. "Not much," said the boy. "They were in England only a little while before I went to Leipsic." "I should like to know them." "That is very easy. Mr. Lavender will introduce you to them: Mrs. Lavender said he went there very much." "What would they do, do you think, if I went up and asked to see them?" "The servant would ask if it was about beer or coals that you called." A man will do much for a woman who is his friend, but to be suspected of being a brewer's traveler, to have to push one's way into a strange drawing-room, to have to confront the awful stare of the inmates, and then to have to deliver a message which they will probably consider as the very extreme of audacious and meddling impertinence! The prospect was not pleasant, and yet Ingram, as he sat and thought over it that evening, finally resolved to encounter all these dangers and wounds. He could help Sheila in no other way. He was banished from her house. Perhaps he might induce this American girl to release her captive and give Lavender back to his own wife. What were a few twinges of one's self-respect, or risks of a humiliating failure, compared with the possibility of befriending Sheila in some small way? Next morning he went early in to Whitehall, and about one o'clock in the forenoon started off for Holland Park. He wore a tall hat, a black frock-coat and yellow kid gloves. He went in a hansom, so that the person who opened the door should know that he was not a brewer's traveler. In this wise he reached Mrs. Kavanagh's house, which Lavender had frequently pointed out to him in passing, about half-past one, and with some internal tremors, but much outward calmness, went up the broad stone steps. A small boy in buttons opened the door. "Is Mrs. Lorraine at home?" "Yes, sir," said the boy.