As if to confirm Eric in his determination there came a knock at the door, and a boyish face peeped _in_. “Sorry, Hudson, if I’ve interrupted business, but they told me the show was over, and I want Eric for supper. By the way, you can come too, if you like. Andrews and Thorne are there already, and have finished supper by this time, I expect. But there’ll be some champagne and lobster-salad left for us.” “Thanks, Lord Eastonville, I’ll come with pleasure, but I must first go and quiet these lunatics. They’re roaring for Eric like a lioness robbed of her cub.” Ten minutes later the three were entering a room in Hope Square, so rich in its decorations of china, tapestries, and antique bronzes that it might have been transported by a slave of the lamp direct from Aladdin’s palace, or have done duty for a catalogue of Roman luxury: “The merchandise of gold and silver and precious stones and of pearls and fine linen and silk and scarlet and all manner of vessels of most precious wood and of brass and iron and marble and frankincense, and souls of men.” By the fire (for it was early in May) stood an oval table, covered with old glass and silver in pleasant confusion. The fruit—a distinctive feature—piled artistically in a ribbed basket of the Queen Anne period, not disposed at the rate of four apples here, flanked by four oranges there, after the fashion dear to the soul of the British householder when he calls his neighbours to a feast. The three new comers were greeted with a round of applause as hearty in spirit as the cheer which had followed them from the hall. “Why, Bindo, you’ve the very boy we’ve been longing for. We’ve finished supper and used up our talk, and it’s too late for a theatre and too early for bed. Singing will just fill the interval before cards.” “Not a note from me, Thorne, till I’ve had some supper. I must clear my throat from the dust of the hall with champagne first. Why you’re as bad as the audience, who think that songs can be pumped out of one as easily as you can get squeaks out of a gutta-percha doll.” While Eric is better employed we can introduce the party. Lord Eastonville, who owns the rooms, is a thorough gentleman of the well-bred English type, with brains enough to carry him safely through life—good-looking, generous, easy-going to a fault, and twenty-five. Too fond, it may be, of taking his ease, as all well-to-do Englishmen are now-a-days, but a man who could fight for his country, as in the old Crimean times, when war galvanised our lethargy into life. War is no unmixed evil; it carries with it a blessing in disguise. It is the scare and shadow of war that is the curse without the blessing. Thorne, as a minute in his company would prove to you, is a hard-headed journalist; witty, and an excellent talker; facile, of course, with his pen, and ready to turn out a new theology as easily as he could write an article on the last discovered butterfly or grub.