"Well, sir; no, sir. I don't think I do. I think I half promised to dine with a fellow at the club." "Don't you think you'd make things meet more easily about the end of the year if you dined oftener here, where you have nothing to pay, and less frequently at the club, where you pay for everything?" "But what I should save you would lose, sir. That's the way I look at it." "Then I advise you to look at it the other way, and leave me to take care of myself. Come in here, I want to speak to you." Everett followed his father into a dingy back parlour, which was fitted up with book shelves and was generally called the study, but which was gloomy and comfortless because it was seldom used. "I have had your friend Lopez with me at my chambers to-day. I don't like your friend Lopez." "I am sorry for that, sir." "He is a man as to whom I should wish to have a good deal of evidence before I would trust him to be what he seems to be. I dare say he's clever." "I think he's more than clever." "I dare say;--and well instructed in some respects." "I believe him to be a thorough linguist, sir." "I dare say. I remember a waiter at an hotel in Holborn who could speak seven languages. It's an accomplishment very necessary for a Courier or a Queen's Messenger." "You don't mean to say, sir, that you disregard foreign languages?" "I have said nothing of the kind. But in my estimation they don't stand in the place of principles, or a profession, or birth, or country. I fancy there has been some conversation between you about your sister." "Certainly there has." "A young man should be very chary how he speaks to another man, to a stranger, about his sister. A sister's name should be too sacred for club talk." "Club talk! Good heavens, sir; you don't think that I have spoken of Emily in that way? There isn't a man in London has a higher respect for his sister than I have for mine. This man, by no means in a light way but with all seriousness, has told me that he was attached to Emily; and I, believing him to be a gentleman and well to do in the world, have referred him to you. Can that have been wrong?" "I don't know how he's 'to do', as you call it. I haven't asked, and I don't mean to ask. But I doubt his being a gentleman. He is not an English gentleman. What was his father?" "I haven't the least idea." "Or his mother?" "He has never mentioned her to me."