ms, by a fatality,
to bring us round to Lizzie. "About town" meant about Lizzie, just now,
Eugene.'

'My solicitor, do you know,' observed Eugene, turning round to the
furniture, 'is a man of infinite discernment!'

'Did it not, Eugene?'

'Yes it did, Mortimer.'

'And yet, Eugene, you know you do not really care for her.'

Eugene Wrayburn rose, and put his hands in his pockets, and stood with a
foot on the fender, indolently rocking his body and looking at the fire.
After a prolonged pause, he replied: 'I don't know that. I must ask you
not to say that, as if we took it for granted.'

'But if you do care for her, so much the more should you leave her to
herself.'

Having again paused as before, Eugene said: 'I don't know that, either.
But tell me. Did you ever see me take so much trouble about anything, as
about this disappearance of hers? I ask, for information.'

'My dear Eugene, I wish I ever had!'

'Then you have not? Just so. You confirm my own impression. Does that
look as if I cared for her? I ask, for information.'

'I asked YOU for information, Eugene,' said Mortimer reproachfully.

'Dear boy, I know it, but I can't give it. I thirst for information.
What do I mean? If my taking so much trouble to recover her does not
mean that I care for her, what does it mean? "If Peter Piper picked a
peck of pickled pepper, where's the peck," &c.?'

Though he said this gaily, he said it with a perplexed and inquisitive
face, as if he actually did not know what to make of himself. 'Look on
to the end--' Lightwood was beginning to remonstrate, when he caught at
the words:

'Ah! See now! That's exactly what I am incapable of doing. How very
acute you are, Mortimer, in finding my weak place! When we were at
school together, I got up my lessons at the last moment, day by day and
bit by bit; now we are out in life together, I get up my lessons in the
same way. In the present task I have not got beyond this:--I am bent
on finding Lizzie, and I mean to find her, and I will take any means
of finding her that offer themselves. Fair means or foul means, are all
alike to me. I ask you--for information--what does that mean? When I
have found her I may ask you--also for information--what do I mean now?
But it would be premature in this stage, and it's not the character of
my mind.'

Lightwood was shaking his head over the air with which his friend held
forth thus--an air so whimsically open and argumentative as almost to