character, and Nugent's one wish seemed to be that Frank, with all the world at his feet, should shun the social snares and pitfalls into which he himself had fallen at the outset of his career. 'You will wonder what brings me to you at such an early hour,' said Eardley, 'more especially after our settling that you should come round and give me your opinion of the Niobe; but when I got home last night, I found a letter from Dossetor, asking me to look at some blue Chelsea china at one o'clock. So I thought I would make an idle morning of it, and inflict my company on you.' 'I am very glad to see you--more glad than I usually should be at this hour; but to-day I happen to be awake--not a very frequent occurrence with me--at eleven o'clock.' 'And in Albania you were always ready to start on our excursions at five,' said Eardley, with a laugh. 'Exactly, my dear Frank; but Albania and the Albany, though almost synonymous, are very different places. It was worth while getting up at any absurd hour for the wild-fowl, shooting there; but there is nothing to shoot at here, unless I were to pot the beadle, or a fellow-lodger shaving at the opposite window. Recollect, too, the air and the silence and all the other enjoyable things.' 'Silence!' cried Eardley. 'If you call that enjoyable, you surely have got enough of it here. I never could understand how people lived in these chambers, with nothing ever to wake the echoes except the occasional footfalls in that melancholy long covered walk.' 'You have that idea because you are never here of an evening, my dear Frank,' said Uffington, 'and have never heard the shrieks of laughter and the very unbridled mirth which floats out upon the evening air when the opposite windows are open, and little Mr. Pincushion, of the Stock Exchange, is entertaining his female friends from the Varieties and the Parthenon. By the way, that was a very good dinner you took me to last night.' 'Of course it was; you have known me long enough to trust me in such matters, have you not? You may be certain that your palate and digestion are always safe in my charge; not that I could guarantee you such wines and such cooking as Chadwick's on every occasion, for they are really first-rate. And the company, what did you think of that?' 'I was amused.' 'Indeed, how very kind of your lordship! We ought all to be deeply indebted to you for your condescension.' 'Don't be an ass, Frank. I was more than amused, for I was pleased and interested.' 'I thought you would be pleased with Mr. Chadwick's high-bred punctiliousness, interested by Mrs. Chadwick's unaffected geniality,' said Eardley, laughing. 'Chaff apart, they are very pleasant people. What did you think of the young lady?' 'What little I saw of her I was much pleased with, but I had hardly a chance of speaking to her.'