Sigismund's house was comfortably furnished; and in no habitation within sound of the bells of St. Pancras were to be seen so many nicknacks, such quaint old black oak book-cases and cabinets, such wonderful morsels of majolica and Palissy, such Liliputian silver tea-services and watering-pots and coal-scuttles, such marvels in the art of photography, such delicious book-binding in white vellum and many-coloured calf, as in the dwelling of the romancer. Mr. Smythe possessed that love of colour and brightness, that childlike yearning for prettiness, which seems the attribute of most men who live by the cultivation of their fancy. To keep these household gods in order was Mrs. Smythe's chief occupation and delight; and to her mind the little inner room lined with books and furnished with a wonderful office-table on which there were inexhaustible bundles of quill-pens and innumerable reams of smooth shining foreign note-paper, was the most sacred chamber ever tenanted by mortal man. For in this apartment did the industrious Sigismund compose his romances, beguiled by the yelping and howling of his favourite dog, who inhabited an open stone-vault below the novelist's windows,--a vault which the boldest of house-agents faltered in designating a back-garden. Perhaps there was no pleasanter house with a mile radius of Russell Square than the modest dwelling inhabited by Mr. and Mrs. Smythe. Here, when the moderator lamp was lighted and the curtains drawn, some of the brightest luminaries of modern literature assembled round the hospitable hearth. Here were always to be found dry sherry and unlimited soda-water, the palest brandy and the most genuine Seltzer and Vichy. Here little wicker covered bottles of liqueur, and cherry cordials that had come straight from Copenhagen by convoy of friendly hands, were found lurking in corners of sideboards. Here better things were said than ever found their way to the compositor. Here the mighty chief of the "Bond-Street Blagueur" laid aside the murderous pen of the critic and expanded in genial friendship--that delicious friendship of the _coterie_, which is another name for enmity to all the rest of the world. And here poor Philip Foley came to seek consolation--or at least friendly listeners into whose ears he could pour the unsuccessful man's bitter railing--when the British Institution and the Academy had been unanimous in rejecting his pictures, and when the Sunday evenings at the Fountains had been particularly dispiriting. Of late Mr. Foley had abandoned himself to a sullen despair--the outward and visible tokens whereof were to be observed in the length of his hair and the carelessness of his attire. He had taken to immoderate tobacco, and laughed a strident laugh at the caustic witticisms of the "Bond-Street" chief. He had grown fitful in his habits, and would sometimes drink himself into an intellectual frenzy with innumerable tumblers of brandy