It was not to be imagined, however, that Mr. Duval had selected this residence haphazard; he had a motive for everything he did; and, when it suited him, was ready to explain it in the most candid manner. 'I took these rooms,' he would say to any inquiring friend, 'and I pay about twice what they are really worth, because I wanted them. My business lies sometimes in Bayswater, and sometimes in Basinghall-street'--he would smile grimly as he pronounced the last name--'and I want to be right in the centre, "the hub of the wheel," as they say in America, whence I can fly out east or west with equal ease. Then again, of late years, a certain number of swells, not being able to spend their money quickly enough on the turf, have chosen to mix themselves up with my profession, and this is a handy kind of place to come and see me at when they want. I have not any feeling for them but one of intense contempt; but that, of course, I keep to myself. Out of them I get a certain portion of my bread-and-cheese, and so I treat them civilly enough, never rubbing them the wrong way, never bowing down and worshipping them. Then, again, I want large rooms, for there are books and papers, and files of playbills, and all sorts of things knocking about; and there is a little slip of a room out there--the warm-bath, I call it--where my secretary works; and altogether the crib suits me, and is not so bad.' 'The crib,' as Mr. Duval called it in his pleasant _argot_, was furnished and fitted with such good taste that it might have puzzled an ingenious Sybarite to suggest an improvement in it. It has been said that the arrangement of a room often furnishes an index to the owner's mind; and if there be truth in the dictum, Mr. Bryan Duval must be a singular compound of many apparently antagonistic qualities.