Josephine gave her a snapping look out of her black eyes, and if there had been time, no doubt would have made good their promise of a tart rejoinder, but the opening of the door, and the entrance of the six feet two inches of manliness, known and described as "Phil," prevented its consummation. I did not know at the time, but I soon did know, who and what this privileged Phil was, who was so much at home at my aunt's house, and so well received and constant a guest. Philip Arbuthnot was, it appeared, my Aunt Edith's only nephew, and the most invaluable and untiring of escorts; supplying the place, in short, only too willingly, of son and brother to his aunt and her unprotected daughters. In the matter of securing opera boxes and concert tickets, cashing drafts, looking after the family interest in Wall street, having a general supervision of the stable, keeping coachman, footman, and waiter in wholesome awe, and in a thousand other ways, he was of inestimable service. What the family would have come to without him, is too painful a speculation to be entered upon unnecessarily. Figaro-ci, Figaro-là, and Figaro liking nothing better than his occupation. He bent his whole mind to it; I never could discover that, he had any other interest or employment in life; lounging around to Gramercy Square after breakfast, embellishing the library sofa with his listless length till lunch, while Josephine practised, or my aunt talked business with him. Then, at one o'clock, after putting them in the carriage (he was not a ladies' man, and hated morning visits), Phil would lounge back to the Clarendon, and by dint of a series of smokes in the reading-room, an hour or so at billiards, and a drive on the road, would manage to get rid of the day, and, at or about five o'clock, would lounge back again to Gramercy Square for dinner and the engagements of the evening. He had been educated at West Point, and though he had not, strictly speaking, covered himself with glory, at the rather searching examination of that rigorous old institution, just passing and that was all, they said, escaping emphatically by the skin of his teeth, still he had been in a very fair way of promotion, when, just before the departure of his aunt's family for Europe, he had unexpectedly and abruptly resigned, and accompanied them. Having inherited a fortune just large enough to serve as a narcotic to ambition and energy, and just moderate enough to prevent his playing any prominent part in Vanity Fair, Phil seemed in the enjoyment of an existence very much to his taste, and entirely satisfying to him. If, in my crude and enthusiastic view of life, it struck _me_ as an existence at once debasing to his nature, and dishonest to his manliness, it was because I had not yet learned that what one-third of the men, and two-thirds of the women in society look upon as the proper business of their lives, must, in the nature of things, be the correct view of the subject. "The night cometh when no