He used no new-fangled ophthalmoscope, but asked many questions in fairly good French, and felt with his fingers, and had many German asides with the assistant. He told Barty that he had lost the sight of his left eye forever; but that with care he would keep that of the right one for the rest of his life--barring accidents, of course. That he must never eat cheese nor drink beer. That he (the doctor) would like to see him once a week or fortnight or so for a few months yet--and gave him a prescription for an eye-lotion and dismissed him happy. Half a loaf is so much better than no bread, if you can only count upon it! Barty went straight to Mr. Beresford Duff's, and there found a very agreeable party, including the divine Julia, who was singing little songs very prettily and accompanying herself on a guitar. "'You ask me why I look so pale?'" sang Julia, just as Barty entered: and red as a rose was she. Lady Jane didn't seem at all overjoyed to see Barty, but Julia did, and did not disguise the seeming. There were eight or ten people there, and they all appeared to know about him, and all that concerned or belonged to him. It was the old London world over again, in little! the same tittle-tattle about well-known people, and nothing else--as if nothing else existed; a genial, easy-going, good-natured world, that he had so often found charming for a time, but in which he was never quite happy and had no proper place of his own, all through that fatal bar-sinister--la barre de bâtardise; a world that was his and yet not his, and in whose midst his position was a false one, but where every one took him for granted at once as one of _them_, so long as he never trespassed beyond that sufferance; that there must be no love-making to lovely young heiresses by the bastard of Antoinette Josselin was taken for granted also! [Illustration: "'YOU ASK ME WHY I LOOK SO PALE?'"] Before Barty had been there half an hour two or three people had evidently lost their hearts to him in friendship; among them, to Lady Jane's great discomfiture, the handsome and amiable Graham-Reece, the cynosure of all female eyes in Riffrath; and when Barty (after very little pressing by Miss Royce) twanged her guitar and sang little songs--French and English, funny and sentimental--he became, as he had so often become in other scenes, the Rigoletto of the company; and Riffrath was a kingdom in which he might be court jester in ordinary if he chose, whenever he elected to honor it with his gracious and facetious musical presence. So much for his début in that strange little overgrown busy village! What must it be like now? Dr. Hasenclever has been gathered to his fathers long ago, and nobody that I know of has taken his place. All those new hotels and lodging-houses and smart shops--what can they have been turned into? Barracks? prisons? military hospitals and sanatoriums? How dull!