nd send him off!"

Lord Culduff turned to caress his whiskers as the other left the room;
and having gracefully disposed a very youthful curl of his wig upon his
forehead, was smiling a pleasant recognition of himself in the glass,
when voices in a louder tone than were wont to be heard in such sacred
precincts startled him. He listened, and suddenly the door was opened
rudely, and Mr. Cutbill entered, Temple Bramleigh falling back as the
other came forward, and closing the door behind.

"So, my Lord, I was to be told you'd not see me, eh?" said Cutbill, his
face slightly flushed by a late altercation.

"I trusted, sir, when my private secretary had told you I was engaged,
that I might have counted upon not being broken in upon."

"There you were wrong, then," said Cutbill, who divested himself of an
overcoat, threw it on the back of a chair, and came forward towards the
fire. "Quite wrong. A man does n't come a thousand and odd miles to be
'not-at homed' at the end of it."

"Which means, sir, that I am positively reduced to the necessity of
receiving you, whether I will or not?"

"Something near that, but not exactly. You see, my Lord, that when
to my application to your lawyer in town I received for answer the
invariable rejoinder, 'it is only my Lord himself can reply to this;
his Lordship alone knows what this, that, or t'other refers to,' I knew
pretty well, the intention was to choke me off. It was saying to me, Is
it worth a journey to Rome to ask this question? and my reply to myself
was, 'Yes, Tom Cutbill, go to Rome by all means.' And here I am."

"So I perceive, sir," said the other dryly and gravely.

"Now, my Lord, there are two ways of transacting business. One may
do the thing pleasantly, with a disposition to make matters easy and
comfortable; or one may approach everything with a determination to
screw one's last farthing out of it, to squeeze the lemon to the last
drop. Which of these is it your pleasure we should choose?"

"I must endeavor to imitate, though I cannot rival your frankness, sir;
and therefore I would say, let us have that mode in which we shall see
least of each other."

"All right. I am completely in your Lordship's hands. You had your
choice, and I don't dispute it. There, then, is my account. It's a
trifle under fourteen hundred pounds. Your Lordship's generosity will
make it the fourteen, I 've no doubt. All the secret-service part--that
trip to town and the dinner at Gre