For the purposes of this story it would be needless to recount all the bits of scandal and chit-chat, interesting and amusing to those acquainted with the various actors in the drama, but utterly vapid to every one else, which the combined memories of Messrs. Alexander Geddes and George Bertram, clerks in the Foreign Office, and gentlemen going a great deal into all kinds of society, had furbished up and put together for the delectation of Colonel Alsager. It was the old, old story of London life, known to every one, and, _mutatis nominibus_, narrated of so many people. Tom's marriage, Dick's divorce, and Harry's going to the bad. Jack Considine left the service, and become sheep-farmer in Australia. Little Tim Stratum, of the Treasury, son of old Dr. Stratum the geologist, marrying that big Indian widow woman, and becoming a heavy swell, with a house in Grosvenor Square. Ned Walters dead,--fit of heart disease, or some infernal thing,--dead, by Jove; and that pretty wife of his, and all those nice little children, gone--God knows where! Lady Cecilia married? Oh, yes; and she and Townshend get on very well, they say; but that Italian chap, Di Varese, with the black beard and the tenor voice, always hanging about the house. Gertrude Netherby rapidly becoming an old woman, thin as a whipping-post, by George! and general notion of nose-and-chinniness. Florence Sackville, as lovely and as jolly as ever, was asking after you only last night. These and a hundred other little bits of gossip about men in his old regiment, and women, reputable and disreputable, formerly of his acquaintance, of turf matters and club scandals, interspersed with such anecdotes, seasoned with _gros sel_, as circulate when the ladies have left the dinner-table, did Laurence Alsager listen to; and when George Bertram stopped speaking and shut up his notebook, he found himself warmly complimented on his capital budget of news by his recently-arrived friend. "You've done admirably, old fellow," said Laurence. "'Pon my oath I don't think there's hardly any one we know that you haven't had something pleasantly unpleasant to say about. Now," taking out his watch, "we must be off to the theatre, and we've just time to smoke a cigarette as we walk down there. You took the two stalls?" "Well--no," replied George Bertram, hesitating rather suspiciously; "I only took one for you; I--I'm going-that is--I've got a seat in a box." "George, you old vagabond, you don't mean to say you're going to desert me the first night I come back?" "Well, I couldn't help it. You see I was engaged to go with these people before you wrote; and--" "All right; what people are they?" "The Mitfords." "Mitfords? _Connais pas_." "Oh, yes; you know them fast enough; Oh, I forgot--all since you left; only just happened." "Look here, George: I've had quite enough of the Sphinx during the last six months, and I don't want any of the enigma business. _What_ has only just happened?"