My lord, will’t please you to fall to? _Richard II._ A limp, drab-coloured group was assembled in the drawing-room at Portland Place. It was nearly half-past seven, and it only wanted the arrival of the Samuel Sachses--who came from the St. John’s Wood synagogue--for the whole party to descend into the dining-room, where the much-needed meal awaited them. The Leunigers were there, of course, with the exception of Ernest and his mother, who had gone home; the Sachses; the Montague Cohens; Mrs. Kohnthal and Esther, who had left her bed at the eleventh hour prompted by a desire for society; Judith; Mr. and Mrs. Quixano, their son Jack, and two young sisters. Bertie Lee-Harrison, who had come in with Reuben, pale, exhausted, but prepared to be impressed by every thing and every one he saw, confided to his friend that the twenty-four hours’ fast had been the severest ordeal he had as yet undergone in the service of religion--his experiences in Asia Minor not excepted. Leo, whose mood had changed, overheard this confidence with an irresistible twitching of the lips. He was sitting on the big sofa with his two little brothers, making jokes below his breath to their immense delight; while Rose, at the other end of the same piece of furniture, was maintaining an animated conversation with her cousin Jack. Jack Quixano was a spruce, dapper, polite young man of some twenty-four or twenty-five years of age. Perhaps he was a little too spruce, a little too dapper, a little too anxious to put himself _en évidence_ by his assiduity in picking up handkerchiefs and opening doors. But few of his family noticed these defects, least of all Rose, on whom he was beginning to cast aspiring eyes, and whom he closely resembled in personal appearance. The door opened at last, to every one’s relief, to admit the expected guests: a party of six--father, mother, grown-up son and daughter, a little girl and a little boy. Samuel Sachs was the unsuccessful member of his family. From the beginning, the atmosphere of the Stock Exchange had proved too strong for his not very strong brains, and his career had been inaugurated by a series of gambling debts. His father paid his debts and forbade him the office, and he had gone his own way for many years, settling down ultimately in a humble way of business as a lithographer. He had married a Polish Jewess with some money of her own, and in these latter days old Solomon made him an allowance, so there was enough and to spare in the home in Maida Vale where he and his family were established. They came now into the crowded drawing-room with a curious mixture of deference and self-assertion. To their eminently provincial minds, the Bayswater Sachses, the Leunigers and the Kohnthals were very great people indeed, and they derived no little prestige in Maida Vale from their connection with so distinguished a family.