They sat for an hour over the fire, Lionel, Arthur, and Mr. Bales, after his lordship had gone to bed; Mr. Bales telling the two gentlemen all he knew about Paul Somerton. Lionel said he wished the young fellow had gone to India; he would like to make his acquaintance and apologise to him for a little act of discourtesy which lay heavily on his mind. It appeared from what the detective said, that Williamson had the credit at his club of having eloped with another man’s wife, and his oldest friends were his severest critics. It was quite a joke at the club, Williamson’s philanthropy, now: some of the fellows put the affair down to constitutional weakness. He had done something of the sort, they said, when he was a very young fellow. That he was a fool was the worst thing they said of him nevertheless, and some of them pitied him, wondered at his silly infatuation, and was glad to hear that the husband had made no objection to his wife’s fresh choice. But they missed the barrister’s quiet benevolent face; some of them would miss the sovereigns that he lent so readily; and the motion of the clerical gentleman who called himself a professor of Hebrew mythology, that his name be expunged from the list of members of the club, was negatived unanimously. Lionel could have sat all night listening to Bales telling these stories of Paul and Williamson, Tallant and Dibble, and so could Arthur Phillips, had that pretty wife of his not been waiting for him. “Ah, I see you want to be off,” said Lionel at length: “good-night, old boy. Bales and I have no magnetic attraction to induce us to lay down our cigars. Ah, well, never mind, Bales, we can’t all expect to be Arthur Phillipses. Good-night, dear old boy. Bales and I will smoke just one more cigar.” But old Morris, who would persist in sitting up until the Captain was ready to retire, looked at his watch and found that it was four o’clock by the time he had put the gas out and gone to bed,--shuddering with superstitious fear as he passed the room where the body of Richard Tallant was lying. CHAPTER XVIII. THE BEGINNING OF THE END.