"What I say," replied Lloyd; "it's impossible for Lord Ticehurst to fight this fellow," with a contemptuous wave of the hand at De Prailles. "I've long thought I recognised him; now I'm sure of it. I don't know what he calls himself now, but he used to answer to the name of Louis three years ago, when he was a billiard-marker at the rooms over the Tennis-court, just out of the Haymarket." "_Tu mens, canaille!_" screamed M. de Prailles, rushing at him; but Gilbert Lloyd caught his adversary by the throat, and with every nerve in his lithe frame strung to its tightest pitch, shook him to and fro. "Drop that!" he said; "drop that, or by the Lord I'll fling you out of the window. You know the height you'd have to fall!" and with one parting shake he threw the Frenchman from him. "I'm glad my memory served me so well; it would have been impossible for your lordship to have gone out with such a fellow." M. André de Prailles left Baden very early the next morning: but the events of that night affected more than him. Although he was not of a grateful or recognisant nature, Lord Ticehurst felt keenly the material assistance which Gilbert Lloyd afforded him at what in his inmost heart his lordship knew to have been a most critical and unpleasant time, and he showed at once that he appreciated this assistance at its proper value. He made immediate advances of friendship to Gilbert, which advances Gilbert received with sufficient _nonchalance_ to cause them to be repeated with double ardour. At the same time he by no means declined the acquaintance which Lord Ticehurst offered him, and in the course of various colloquies contrived to indoctrinate his lordship with a notion of his extraordinary 'cuteness in things in general, and in matters pertaining to the turf and to society in particular. The world, as viewed through Gilbert Lloyd's glasses, had to Lord Ticehurst quite a different aspect from that under which he had hitherto seen it, and he raged against opportunities missed and stupid courses taken while under the tutelage of Plater Dobbs. To rid himself of that worthy's companionship and to instal Gilbert Lloyd in his place was a task which Lord Ticehurst set himself at once, and carried out with great speed and success. He found little opposition from the Plater. That worldly-wise old person had seen how matters stood--"how the cat jumped," as he phrased it--from the first, and was perfectly prepared to receive his _congé_. Nor, indeed, was he altogether displeased at the arrangement. His good qualities were few enough, but among them was the possession of personal pluck and courage, and a horror of anyone in whom these were lacking. "I always knew Etchingham was a duffer, sir," he would say in after-days--"a pig-headed, obstinate, mean duffer--but I never thought he was a cur until that night. He was in a blue funk, I tell you--in a blue funk of a d--d little Frenchman that he could have swallowed whole! I don't complain, sir. He hasn't