d him in and gave him wine; and whether he went then and
returned again when the company were gone is a question. Any way, he was
found in the morning, cold and dead at the foot of the stairs, and his
neck broken. It is said by some a trap was laid for him on the
staircase. And if it was,' the man continued, after a pause, his true
feeling finding sudden vent, 'it is a black shame that the law does not
punish it! But the coroner brought it in an accident.'

Sir George shrugged his shoulders. Then, moved by curiosity and a desire
to learn something about the girl, 'His daughter takes it hardly,'
he said.

The man grunted. 'Ah,' he said, 'maybe she has need to. Your honour does
not come from him?'

'From Whom? I come from no one.'

'To be sure, sir, I was forgetting. But, seeing you with her--but there,
you are a stranger.'

Soane would have liked to ask him his meaning, but felt that he had
condescended enough. He bade the man a curt good-night, therefore, and
turning away passed quickly into St. Aldate's Street. Thence it was but
a step to the Mitre, where he found his baggage and servant
awaiting him.

In those days distinctions of dress were still clear and unmistakable.
Between the peruke--often forty guineas' worth--the tie-wig, the
scratch, and the man who went content with a little powder, the
intervals were measurable. Ruffles cost five pounds a pair; and velvets
and silks, cut probably in Paris, were morning wear. Moreover, the
dress of the man who lost or won his thousand in a night at Almack's,
and was equally well known at Madame du Deffand's in Paris and at
Holland House, differed as much from the dress of the ordinary
well-to-do gentleman as that again differed from the lawyer's or the
doctor's. The Mitre, therefore, saw in Sir George a very fine gentleman
indeed, set him down to an excellent supper in its best room, and
promised a post-chaise-and-four for the following morning--all with much
bowing and scraping, and much mention of my lord to whose house he would
post. For in those days, if a fine gentleman was a very fine gentleman,
a peer was also a peer. Quite recently they had ventured to hang one;
but with apologies, a landau-and-six, and a silken halter.

Sir George would not have had the least pretension to be the glass of
fashion and the mould of form, which St. James's Street considered him,
if he had failed to give a large share of his thoughts while he supped
to the beautiful woman he h