Before twelve o’clock Mr. Lowther had abandoned his place at the whist-table to his brother; and after lounging behind the chair of a young man who was playing _écarté_, and making a random bet now and then, the host proposed supper,--a proposition which was received very warmly by the men who were losing money, and very coolly by the winners. Harcourt Lowther’s supper was almost as unceremonious an affair as that memorable entertainment in Lant Street, Borough, at which Mr. Robert Sawyer played the part of host. A young man, hired for the occasion from a neighbouring tavern, laid the cloth very rapidly, while the guests lounged against the corners of the mantel-pieces, and grouped themselves in little knots, to discuss coming events in the racing world, or to criticise current pictures and current theatricals, with an occasional spice of current scandal. The supper was very simple. There were unlimited supplies of those delicate little oysters which seem created with a special view to bachelors’ supper-parties, and the refreshment of exhausted playgoers; and whose native beds the ignorant foreigner might not unnaturally imagine to lie somewhere at the back of the Strand. And to wash these down, Mr. Lowther had provided Chablis, white Hermitage, and Rüdesheimer. There were spatch-cocks and devilled kidneys, fried potatoes, monster lobsters, marvellous cheeses from the remotest cantons of Switzerland, and the most delicate varieties of green-stuff from a French fruiterer’s in the purlieus of Leicester Square. There was no pretence of an elaborate entertainment; but there was an open case of sparkling Moselle by the side of Mr. Lowther’s chair, into which he dipped about once in five minutes; and the young man from the tavern had been initiated into the mysteries of a claret-cup, which he compounded at a rickety little sideboard in the inner room. So far as the guests went, the supper was a success. There was just the amount of confusion which gives a picnic flavour to a meal, and which seems an infallible stimulant of animal spirits. Mr. Lowther’s visitors enjoyed themselves immensely, and the party was becoming boisterous in its gaiety, when the door was opened, and Francis Tredethlyn walked in. Harcourt Lowther pushed away the Moselle case, which was now only filled with tumbled straw and empty bottles, and called for a chair, which was edged into the corner at the host’s right hand.