When Mr. Wetter reached South Audley-street, he found his groom standing on the curbstone, and a gentlemen in the act of knocking at the door. Alighting, he found this gentleman, to his great astonishment, to be Mr. Humphrey Statham; and at sight of him an uneasy pang shot through Mr. Wetter's mind. Humphrey Statham was, as he knew, an intimate friend of Mrs. Claxton's, and his visit there was doubtless on business connected with her. If she had described the scene which had passed between them that morning, that business would doubtless be of a very unpleasant character, and Mr. Wetter was not a brave man physically. He had borne in his time a vast amount of moral obloquy, and borne it well; but he had a horror of anything like physical pain, and Humphrey Statham was a big, strong, and resolute man. No wonder, therefore, that the article which did Mr. Wetter duty for a conscience quailed within him, or that he felt sorely uncomfortable when he recognised the visitor on his doorstep. But he was the last man to give any early outward sign of such emotion, and it was in sprightly tones and with an air of easy jauntiness that he said, 'My dear Mr. Statham, I congratulate myself immensely on having returned so exactly in the nick of time, if, as I imagine, you were about to do me the honour of paying me a visit.' 'I was coming to call upon you, Mr. Wetter,' said Statham simply. 'Then pray walk in,' said Wetter, opening the door with his key, and following closely after him up the stairs. 'Take that chair; you will find it, I think, a particularly comfortable one; and,' going to an old oak sideboard, 'let me give you an appetiser, a petit verre of absinthe or vermouth. They are both here, and either of them is a most delicious ante-prandial specific.' 'No, thank you,' said Humphrey Statham; 'I will not drink with you.' Whether intentionally or not, he laid such stress on the last words that Mr. Wetter looked up at him for an instant with flashing eyes. But his voice was quite calm when, a minute after he said, 'I will not attempt to persuade you. There is no such mistaken hospitality as that. And now, as a man of your business habits does not waste his time without a purpose, I will inquire the object of this visit.' 'It is not one into which business enters, in the strict sense of the word,' said Statham. 'So much the better,' said Mr. Wetter, with a gay smile. 'What is not a visit of business must be a visit of pleasure.' 'I hope you will find it so,' said Statham grimly. 'Its object, so far as I am concerned, is very easily stated. You were at Mrs. Claxton's to-day?' 'I was,' said Wetter, putting a bold face on the matter. 'And when there you thought it expedient to your purpose, and being expedient for your purpose, not below your dignity as a man, to subject your hostess for the time to the grossest insult that could be passed upon any one.' 'Sir!' cried Wetter, springing up.