Would you not have thought the same in a like case? I trow, yes! I will not deny that I expended the most elaborate pains on my toilet that afternoon, before waiting upon Mrs Clyde in accordance with my promise to Min. I did not otherwise comply fully with the essential requirements of Madame la Comtesse de Bassanville's _Code Complet du Ceremonial_--such as causing an influential friend, who could speak of my morals and position, to have a previous audience with "the responsible relation" of "the young person who had attracted my notice;" nor, did I don a pair of "light fresh-butter-coloured kid gloves." Still, I undoubtedly betrayed a considerable nicety of apparel all the same. Indeed, I absolutely out-Hornered Horner; and, had anybody detected me when engaged in the mysteries of the dressing-room, I would certainly have been supposed to have been as anxiously considerate respecting the choice I should make between light trousers and dark, a black coat and a blue one, and whether I would wear a white waistcoat or not, as a young lady costuming herself for a ball, and debating with her maid the rival merits of blush roses and pink silk, or of white tarlatan and clematis. It was, also, some time ere I could summon up enough resolution to knock at the door of Mrs Clyde's residence, when, my decorative preparations accomplished, I at length succeeded in getting round to her house. The expedition strangely reminded me of a visit I was once forced to pay to a dentist, owing to the misdeeds of one of my best molars; the dread of the impending interview almost inducing me to turn back on the threshold and put off my painful purpose for a while--even as had been my course of procedure when calling at Signor Odonto's agonising establishment. On that occasion, I remember, I recoiled in fright from the dreaded ordeal, seeking refuge in "instant flight." I could not do so now, however. I had promised Min to speak to her mother as soon as possible; and, independently of that engagement, the interview would have to be gone through sooner or later, at all hazards. "An' it were done quickly, it were well done;" so, at last, my hesitation passed away under the influence of this, really vital, consideration. I nerved myself up to the knocking point. I gave a loud rat, tat, tat! that thrilled through my very boots, causing a passing butcher's boy, awed by its important sound, to inquire, with the cynical empressement of his race, whether I thought myself the "Emperoar of Rooshia." I turned my back on him with contempt; but, his ribald remark made me feel all the more nervous. "Mrs Clyde at home?" I asked of the handmaiden, who answered my summons. Yes, Mrs Clyde was at home. Would I walk in? I would; and did. So far, all was plain sailing:--now, came the tug of war. Mrs Clyde was standing up, facing the door, as I entered the drawing- room into which the handmaiden had ushered me. "Won't you sit down, Mr Lorton?" she said, politely.