much of the life his son was leading, mixed up with horses and betting-people and jockeys, and all that kind of thing. Whew! it could not be helped, he supposed. It was too late to change it. Steady there! Arrived! When Lord Ticehurst entered the rooms in the hotel which he occupied conjointly with Gilbert Lloyd, he found that gentleman asleep on the sofa, with a decanter of brandy on a small table by his side. The decanter was half-empty; and when Gilbert, awaking at the noise made by his friend's arrival, turned round, his face, especially round the eyes, had a strained, flushed look, and his voice, when he began to speak, was rather thick and husky. "Hallo!" he said, raising himself on his elbow, and shading his eyes with his other hand, "you've got back!" "Yes," replied his lordship; "here I am!" "Perhaps the next time you are going to stop out to dinner you will have the goodness to say so." "Don't be cross, old man; you knew I was going, fast enough." "I knew you were going out to luncheon, but there was nothing said about dinner, I believe; and as to being cross, it's enough to make a fellow savage, having had to cool his heels about here for an hour and a half, waiting dinner for a man who never came; and then to sit down to a lot of stuff cooked to rags, half cold, and quite uneatable." "Sorry for that, Gil," said Lord Ticehurst with unimpaired good-humour; "very sorry, but you should not have waited." "O, I like that!" said Lloyd; "and suppose your lordship had not had your dinner, and had come in when I had half-finished mine, you would have been pleased, wouldn't you?" "I don't suppose 'my lordship,' as you call me, would have cared one straw about it. What a rum fellow you are, Gil! What's the matter with you to-night, that you are going on in this way?" "Going on in what way? I merely suggested that it would have been pleasanter if you had said you would not be back to dinner, and--" "But I didn't know that I should not. I had no intention of stopping when I went away. Can't you understand?" "O yes, I understand! _Chapeau bas, chapeau bas!_ However, that's no matter now. I ought to have known that the young lady would suggest your stopping there--that the old Belwethers would be delighted to receive a person of your lordship's quality, and that--" "There, you may drop that silliness as soon as you like. It's very funny, I daresay; but it's all thrown away, because I didn't stop at Hardriggs after all." "The deuce you didn't! Why, where did you dine, then?" "At the hotel at Hastings, with Bobby Maitland and that young fellow he's always about with now--'Haystacks.'" "I know," growled Gilbert. He hated Maitland, and half-despised him, as men do their unsuccessful rivals. "What on earth made you dine with them?"