he
only ornament wanting to this sweet cottage? Why is she still invisible?
Remedy that unhappy oversight, sir. You are here in a suburban Paradise.
I consult my long experience; and I implore you to invite Eve.--Ha!
you smile; your lost gaiety returns, and you feel it as I do. Might I
propose another glass of claret, and the reappearance on the table of
the Tourne-dos a la poivrade?"

It was impossible to be melancholy in this man's company. Amelius
sanctioned the return of the Tourne-dos, and tried the other glass of
claret. "My good friend," he said, with something like a return of his
old easy way, "you talk about charming women, and your long experience.
Let's hear what your experience has been."

For the first time Toff began to look a little confused.

"You have honoured me, sir, by calling me your good friend," he said.
"After that, I am sure you will not send me away if I own the truth. No!
My heart tells me I shall not appeal to your indulgence in vain. Dear
sir, in the holidays which you kindly give me, I provide competent
persons to take care of the house in my absence, don't I? One person,
if you remember, was a most handsome engaging young man. He is, if you
please, my son by my first wife--now an angel in heaven. Another
person, who took care of the house, on the next occasion, was a little
black-eyed boy; a miracle of discretion for his age. He is my son by my
second wife--now another angel in heaven. Forgive me, I have not
done yet. Some few days since, you thought you heard an infant crying
downstairs. Like a miserable wretch, I lied; I declared it was the
infant in the next house. Ah, sir, it was my own cherubim baby by my
third wife--an angel close by in the Edgeware Road, established in a
small milliner shop, which will expand to great things by-and-by. The
intervals between my marriages are not worthy of your notice. Fugitive
caprices, sir--fugitive caprices! To sum it all up (as you say in
England), it is not in me to resist the enchanting sex. If my third
angel dies, I shall tear my hair--but I shall none the less take a
fourth."

"Take a dozen if you like," said Amelius. "Why should you have kept all
this from my knowledge?"

Toff hung his head. "I think it was one of my foreign mistakes," he
pleaded. "The servants' advertisements in your English newspapers
frighten me. How does the most meritorious manservant announce
himself when he wants the best possible place? He says he is 'without