"My dear soul, he has gone too far. He will never be cured. When a man of his age gambles or drinks, the chances of cure are nil." "Would you like to see him, sir?" Topsparkle suppressed a shudder. "Better not, madam. I should but agitate him by my presence. I will call on you to-morrow, when he may be in a better condition to converse with me." He kissed Madame's fair hand, and bowed himself out of her presence. He walked along Poland Street, across Golden Square, westward to St. James's Street, with that light and easy motion which had become natural to him, the bearing of an elderly man who never meant to be old, who defied age to wither him, and who conquered the insidious foe called Time, by being in all things younger than youth itself. Yonder gallant guardsman of five-and-twenty on the opposite pavement moved heavily compared with the airy grace with which Topsparkle skimmed the street. He had trained every muscle, schooled every sinew in the long fight against senility. By his temperance and his activity he had contrived so far to have the best of the battle. The day of defeat must come sooner or later, he knew, and he had steeled himself to contemplate the end with a cynical courage. "May it be sharp and swift," he said; "may I crumble to pieces in an hour, like an embalmed corpse which is suddenly exposed to the air after two thousand years in an Egyptian sepulchre." To-day, though his mind was full of perplexity, his movements and the carriage of his head were as jaunty as ever. No one who saw those dainty red-heeled shoes tripping along, and the careless swing of that slender rapier, would have supposed that Mr. Topsparkle was meditating anything more serious than the last quarrel between the Cuzzoni faction and the Faustina faction at the opera house, or the last wild exploit of mad-cap Peterborough at Bevis Mount. What was to be done with this worn-out tool of his, which was getting dangerous? That was the question. It had never occurred to Vyvyan Topsparkle that his accomplice would not last as long as himself; that this slave of his, who had done his bidding with an unscrupulous obedience which indicated a mind utterly callous to the distinction between right and wrong, should at the eleventh hour develop a guilty conscience and all its attendant inconveniences.