"Cannot say," answered Vellumy, smiling, "unless it be to call your palette into requisition, to pourt_w_ay the beauties of his ladye-love." "Lady Dora Vaughan?" asked the other in surprise. "I thought she had quitted Up--. Indeed, I _know_ she has," he added hastily; "I saw her to-day." "Not Lady Do_w_a," answered Vellumy, with a knowing smile. "Some one else he is ve_w_y much in love with, a----" Up to the present moment he had been talking at random, just to divert Tremenhere's ideas from any thing singular in the summons the other had received. Some thread from the Parque's weaving surely, tangled round his shallow mind at this juncture, and drew him on, without thinking on his part, to add, by way of "fun:" "I don't know that I ought to tell you"--this was said confidentially--"but G_w_ay is deucedly in love with some married woman, q_w_ite a beauty, I hear." "Indeed!" was the thoughtful, half painful reply, yet he could not tell where this information galled him. "Oh yes!" continued the confidential Vellumy; "it is a recent affair--G_w_ay is te_w_ibly in love," he glanced smilingly at the thoughtful Tremenhere. "Do you know her?" asked he. "No, he's ne_w_er let me see her; it is quite a romantic affair, of _w_ecent date." "Married, you say?" inquired Tremenhere, trembling he scarcely knew why. "Then of course the passion is a hopeless one?" "What an innocent you would make me think you!" laughed Vellumy. "Her husband, I hear, is a jealous cu_w_mudgeon; she's af_w_aid of her life of him, but, f_w_om all I hear, I should certainly say she loved G_w_ay, and not a little." A cold chill passed through the other's frame, then suddenly recalling his cruel suspicions of Minnie, which had been so completely obliterated from his mind, he shook off the incubus hanging round his heart, and said mentally, "I am again playing the madman! There are thousands of married women with whom Lord Randolph is acquainted." And, resolved to banish these thoughts, he started a totally different subject, and conversing indifferently they arrived at the end of their journey. They found their host absent, however; he and some friends were out shooting, so a servant said, but would of course return for dinner. Tremenhere took possession of the room awarded him, and afterwards he and Vellumy amused themselves with billiards for an hour or two. Lord Randolph was one of the most oblivious personages in the world; he totally forgot, in the turmoil of other thoughts, that Marmaduke Burton had on a previous occasion declined meeting Tremenhere; great, then, was the unpleasing surprise of both, when Lord Randolph entered in shooting trim, accompanied by the latter. Tremenhere's brow flushed with pride as Lord Randolph said, slightly presenting them, "I suppose you two have met before?" Burton looked pale and uncomfortable; Tremenhere said boldly, "We have met often."