What was to be done with him? Before the question was finally decided, Mrs. Bascroft, the landlady of the Plough and Harrow, who had made one of the company, went off to her bar, whence she hastened back again with an immense hot tumbler, three parts brandy, one part water, the whole of which was poured down the throat of Dan. "There's nothing like it for restoring folks after a fright," remarked Mrs. Bascroft. The result of the dose was, that Dan Duff subsided into a state of real stupor, so profound and prolonged that even Jan began to doubt whether he would awake from it. CHAPTER L. MR. AND MRS. VERNER. Lionel Verner sat over his morning letters, bending upon one of them a perplexed brow. A claim which he had settled the previous spring--at least, which he believed had been settled--was now forwarded to him again. That there was very little limit to his wife's extravagance, he had begun to know. In spite of Sibylla's extensive purchases made in Paris at the time of their marriage, she had contrived by the end of the following winter to run up a tolerable bill at her London milliner's. When they had gone to town in the early spring, this bill was presented to Lionel. Four hundred and odd pounds. He gave Sibylla a cheque for its amount, and some gentle, loving words of admonition at the same time--not to spend him out of house and home. A second account from the same milliner had arrived this morning--been delivered to him with other London letters. Why it should have been sent to him, and not to his wife, he was unable to tell--unless it was meant as a genteel hint that payment would be acceptable. The whole amount was for eleven hundred pounds, but part of this purported to be "To bill delivered"--four hundred and odd pounds--the precise sum which Lionel believed to have been paid. Eleven hundred pounds! and all the other claims upon him! No wonder he sat with a bent brow. If things went on at this rate, Verner's Pride would come to the hammer. He rose, the account in his hand, and proceeded to his wife's dressing-room. Among other habits, Sibylla was falling into that of indolence, scarcely ever rising to breakfast now. Or, if she rose, she did not come down. Mademoiselle Benoite came whisking out of a side room as he was about to enter. "Madame's toilette is not made, sir," cried she, in a tart tone, as if she thought he had no right to enter. "What of that?" returned Lionel. And he went in.