“She will convey my hints to Mrs. Tredethlyn,” thought the diplomatist, “and they won’t lose by her interpretation; so I’ve done that fellow a service, and wasted my morning, since Miss Grunderson is not to be seen.” But on leaving Julia Mr. Lowther decided on speculating a call upon Rosa’s papa. There was always the chance of seeing the young lady; and as Mrs. Tredethlyn’s house could no longer afford a platform for the carrying out of Roderick’s matrimonial schemes, it was absolutely necessary that he should try a bold stroke and advance matters. He had ascertained Rosa’s address, and had no difficulty in finding the Grunderson mansion, which was close at hand. He was not very certain about the number of the house, but selected it unhesitatingly from its fellows for the vivid greenness of its blinds, and the intense newness which pervaded every object that was visible through unshrouded windows of plate-glass. The Grunderson mansion bared its inner splendours unflinchingly to the eyes of the passer-by; and Mr. Grunderson’s dining-room, superb in pollard oak, and with the Grunderson arms blazing on the scarlet morocco backs of the chairs, revealed itself to the very core of its heart to every butterman’s apprentice or butcher’s boy who brought his wares to the area-gate. Thus Roderick Lowther found it very difficult not to make his perception of Mr. Grunderson, seated at the head of his table with a substantial luncheon before him, unpleasantly palpable while he rang the visitors’ bell. Fortune favoured the diplomatist, for the hospitable millionaire insisted on his being ushered into the dining-room; very much to the discomfiture of Rosa, who was partaking of an unfashionable plate of underdone beef from the sirloin before her papa, and who had a big bottle containing some yellow compound in the way of pickle, and ornamented by a blazing label, on her right hand, and an imperial pint of Guinness’s stout on her left. The stout and the embarrassment produced by Mr. Lowther’s appearance combined to dye Rosa’s cheeks with a very vivid carnation; but the diplomatist would have been less than a diplomatist if he had not appeared supremely unconscious of the two bottles and the underdone beef.