"No, dear boy, no! I'm here with the Pellingers you know--yes! Showing them round. They're paying my ex's." "Of course. I knew you wouldn't pay them yourself." "Ah! but they like travelling with me--yes!" "I shouldn't care about a pet monkey myself," said Eustace rudely. "No! you're a Robinson Crusoe kind of chap, ain't you?" said Billy, quite unmoved by his epithet. "By the way, I saw your cousin and his wife in Paris--yes! Wife cut me. Beastly rude I think, when I knew her father so well--he was a great friend of mine--rather!" "Not a very creditable thing to boast of," replied Eustace, enraged at this reference to Lady Errington. "Oh, who cares? If Asmodeus unroofed the houses in town, you bet there'd be 'ructions. Just so!" "You do your best to play Asmodeus." "Yes--want to purify Society. By the way, Mrs. Veilsturm was asking after you." "Very kind of her!" "And Major Griff. I wonder Society tolerates those two, Eh?" "Oh, Society tolerates all kinds of noxious beasts now-a-days," said Eustace, with a significant glance at Billy. "Yes! horrid, isn't it? Those two have got hold of Dolly Thambits, you know--young fool that came in for a lot of money--rather. She's plucking him, and the Major is pocketing the feathers--yes!" "Can't you share the spoil?" asked Eustace drily. "No! wish I could, but Mrs. Veilsturm doesn't like me--not much! I say, look here, where do you go?" "That's my business," retorted Eustace, rising. "I'm not going to tell you my movements and have them recorded in that scurrilous paper of yours." "No," said Billy calmly, "that's a pity, because they're all curious about you in town--yes. Never mind, I'll say I met you at Venice." "You'll say I dropped you into the Grand Canal also, if you don't mind your own business," growled Gartney wrathfully, moving towards him. "Eh! I don't care. Anything for a paragraph." The impudence of the little man so tickled Eustace that he burst out laughing, and without carrying out his threat, walked away, while Mr. Dolser, pulling out his note-book, dotted down a few remarks. "I'll get two columns out of him," he said to himself in a gratified tone. "He's staying at Danieli's I know, so I'll look up his valet and find out where he's off to--yes." Which Mr. Dolser did, and the result appeared in an abusive article a fortnight afterwards in "The Pepper Box" headed "Gartney's Gaddings" which several of the poet's friends enjoyed very much. As for Eustace, after getting rid of Billy Dolser, he went off to his hotel, and arranged all about his departure for Cyprus, anxious to get away at once so as to avoid another meeting with the proprietor of "The Pepper Box." Consequently next day be found himself on board an Austrian-Lloyd steamer, slowly steaming down the Adriatic into the shadow of the coming night, and as he stood on the deck with the salt wind blowing in his face, he murmured: "Well, that chapter of my life is closed."