"I will conduct you to your door, sir," said his host. The piano was heard. Dr. Middleton laid his hand on the banisters, and remarked: "The ladies must have gone to bed?" Vernon came out of the library and was hailed, "Fellow-student!" He waved a good-night to the Doctor, and said to Willoughby: "The ladies are in the drawing-room." "I am on my way upstairs," was the reply. "Solitude and sleep, after such a wine as that; and forefend us human society!" the Doctor shouted. "But, Willoughby!" "Sir." "One to-morrow." "You dispose of the cellar, sir." "I am fitter to drive the horses of the sun. I would rigidly counsel, one, and no more. We have made a breach in the fiftieth dozen. Daily one will preserve us from having to name the fortieth quite so unseasonably. The couple of bottles per diem prognosticates disintegration, with its accompanying recklessness. Constitutionally, let me add, I bear three. I speak for posterity." During Dr. Middleton's allocution the ladies issued from the drawing-room, Clara foremost, for she had heard her father's voice, and desired to ask him this in reference to their departure: "Papa, will you tell me the hour to-morrow?" She ran up the stairs to kiss him, saying again: "When will you be ready to-morrow morning?" Dr Middleton announced a stoutly deliberative mind in the bugle-notes of a repeated ahem. He bethought him of replying in his doctorial tongue. Clara's eager face admonished him to brevity: it began to look starved. Intruding on his vision of the houris couched in the inner cellar to be the reward of valiant men, it annoyed him. His brows joined. He said: "I shall not be ready to-morrow morning." "In the afternoon?" "Nor in the afternoon." "When?" "My dear, I am ready for bed at this moment, and know of no other readiness. Ladies," he bowed to the group in the hall below him, "may fair dreams pay court to you this night!" Sir Willoughby had hastily descended and shaken the hands of the ladies, directed Horace De Craye to the laboratory for a smoking-room, and returned to Dr. Middleton. Vexed by the scene, uncertain of his temper if he stayed with Clara, for whom he had arranged that her disappointment should take place on the morrow, in his absence, he said: "Good-night, good-night," to her, with due fervour, bending over her flaccid finger-tips; then offered his arm to the Rev. Doctor. "Ay, son Willoughby, in friendliness, if you will, though I am a man to bear my load," the father of the stupefied girl addressed him. "Candles, I believe, are on the first landing. Good-night, my love. Clara!" "Papa!" "Good-night." "Oh!" she lifted her breast with the interjection, standing in shame of the curtained conspiracy and herself, "good night". Her father wound up the stairs. She stepped down.