her and
son, and then entering into conversation upon indifferent topics, as if
nothing had happened.

Book 2, Chapter VI.

RIGHT HONOURABLE.

"Now look here, Josh: it's of no use for you to come bothering me like
this. Here have I been back from Italy only a few days, and you're down
upon me like a leech--I mean like a hawk!"

"If your lordship had condescended to tell me that you were going
abroad, and consulted me about the meeting of those little bills when
they fell due, it would have been a different thing."

The scene was a heavily-furnished room in a fashionable London hotel,
and the speakers were George Viscount Maudlaine, son and heir to the
hampered estates and somewhat tarnished title of the Right Honourable
Valentine, twentieth Earl of Chiltern; and Joshua Braham, Esq.,
solicitor, of Drury Chambers, St Alban's Place, Regent Street. The
former, as he lounged back in his purple dressing-gown, appeared to be
a tall, well-made young man, with a somewhat dreamy or
tobacco-contemplative cast of countenance, more remarkable for bone, and
the prominence of the well-known Chiltern features, than anything
particularly definite; the latter was a gentleman, very smooth, very
swarthy, possessing a ruddy and Eastern development of lip, aquiline
of--nose, hair short--black--spiky--of a texture, in short, that
threatened, should a lock be sent for, to fly off in dangerous blinding
showers of capillary stubble.

"You see, I don't recollect these sort of things," said his lordship.

"Only when your lordship requires a fresh supply of money," said Mr
Braham, smiling like a shark, and rubbing his hands together so that his
rings rattled.

"There, don't make a bother: sit down and have some breakfast, Braham,"
said the younger man. "These sort of things are so dooced unpleasant."

"Unpleasant? There's nothing further from my thoughts, my lord, than
making things unpleasant. I only came, after writing twice to remind
your lordship that three bills, which fell due a month since, were all
returned, and now lie in my hands, with interest and expenses attached.
Unpleasant? Why, I give you my word, that Moss, or Peterson, or
Barcohen, would have had your lordship arrested and in Bream's Buildings
or Cursitor Street days ago. But I don't do business like that. I only
accommodate gentlemen of position, and then, in return, I expect to get
the treatment one meets with from gentlemen of position."

"You Israelitish h