As he sits this morning in his newly furnished villa in the Camden Road his plans are formed, his capital is invested, he is at the head of an obedient and well-organized staff, and he is about to embark on the perilous and daring enterprise. His capital is the £500 Birnie had repaid him. He is under an obligation to no one for that. To his staff we shall in due time be introduced, and through the varying stages of his brilliant enterprise we shall accompany him. He has finished his breakfast. He rings the bell, and cherry-ribbons enters and clears away. He has so much to see to and so much to think of this morning, that he will not want to be interrupted, and it is perfectly certain that he will have a strong objection to being overlooked. Under these circumstances, having satisfied our curiosity as to his antecedents and present position, it will perhaps be as well if we take our departure and creep out of Eden Villa as quietly as we entered it. CHAPTER XIV. JABEZ SEES THE GHOST. It was Miss Duck’s birthday—which birthday let us not be ungallant enough to inquire. Georgina herself confessed to thirty-three, but Jabez had heard her confess to quite that amount of years on many previous anniversaries when there had been no company present; he wisely held his tongue, and concluded that Georgina had been adding up with the trifling omission of a ten. It was quite a festive occasion this evening at the little house at Dalston. Miss Jackson from over the way was invited, and so was her young brother; Bess and George were of the party, and Jabez came home an hour earlier in order to assist Georgina in doing the honours. Tea was over and cleared away, and in its place there stood upon the table a plate of biscuits, a decanter of port, a decanter of sherry, and a plate of oranges cut into quarters. Miss Jackson, between sundry fits of weeping, had confided to Bess that birthdays always made her miserable; and Miss Jackson’s brother, supremely uncomfortable in a collar that would keep coming unbuttoned, sat on the edge of a chair and blushed crimson every time anyone looked at him. Miss Jackson’s brother was a nervous youth of nineteen, who wrote sonnets to Venus and odes to Diana of the most impassioned order, but could not look a mortal female in the face without going the colour of a boiled lobster. After tea he wriggled on the edge of his chair, and divided his time between rebuttoning his collar and pretending to be deeply interested in the pattern of the carpet. ‘Georgina dear,’ said Miss Jackson, during a pause in the conversation, ‘how sad it is to think that in the midst of this festivity’—Miss Jackson glanced at the cut oranges and sweet biscuits—‘we are really celebrating the close of another year of your dear life.’ ‘Lor, Carry, don’t!’ said Georgina. ‘You give one the creeps.’ ‘Alas!’ sighed Carry, ‘we are all one year nearer the grave than we were a year ago.’