Mr. Anthony Clare stayed behind to help our hero home to bed. His effort to achieve sobriety had completely exhausted such faculties as remained after so many quarts of Burgundy, and he babbled to his companion foolish threats and impotent defiance in such an incoherent voice that I doubt his enemy, had he been present, would scarcely have been able to discover common sense in any one of his remarks. Charles woke up in the morning full of bile, dressed himself in a splenetick fury and ate a breakfast, conspicuous for its peppery flavours, with petulance and aversion. Then he crammed his gold-laced Kevenhuller hat on his head and went out to interview Mr. Horace Ripple. In crossing the courtyard of the inn he passed Mr. Chalkley, and for a moment debated seriously the wisdom of challenging him out of hand. This he was the more inclined to do because he fancied the gallant Ensign was regarding him with some disfavour. However, the latter gave him a 'good morning,' and excused his want of geniality on the score of a liver teased out of endurance by hard and violent exercise. So Charles forgave him his supposed breach of good manners and decided to hear from Tony a full account of the evening's events. Clare presently overtook him under the archway, and, on being informed of our hero's destination, tried to dissuade him from the projected visit to the Beau. "Z----ds! I tell you that blackguard shall be turned out of the Wells with ignominy." So much Charles vowed. "But 'tis no business of yours, Charles," argued his friend. "No business of mine? Eh! is that so? Then, by heaven! I'll make it my business." "Ripple does not believe in settling disputes of this nature by the personal encounter." "Then, by heaven!" said Charles, "that being the case there is the greater necessity for expelling him from the company of gentlemen." "That is all very well," expostulated Clare, "but you are neither the young woman's brother nor, as I believe, her lover. What right have you to interfere?" "I tell you, Tony," said Charles, "that Ripple has already pondered the advisableness of interfering with Mr. Francis Amor-Vernon and, indeed, begged me to disclose his pseudonym, but I would not." "You owed him money, in fact?" said Clare, gently tapping the kerb of the pavement with his cane. "Yes, I owed the dog money." "And now he is paid?" "Thanks to your generosity he is paid." "Charles," said Mr. Clare, laying his hand affectionately on that indignant gentleman's right shoulder, "oblige me, who was able and glad to oblige you, by not proceeding further in this affair." "'Tis monstrous ill-bred in you to remind me of an obligation under which I laid myself with the most profound disinclination." Charles was growing angry. "Nay, you know that is not my meaning, but, consider Charles, this confounded, pasquinading pamphlet book has placed you in such an ill light that the world will be very loth to believe any good of you."