rst glance. There was nothing that he could
learn from that. He was as good a judge of the manner in which he
would play his own game as Kate could be; but in this matter he was
to learn how he would play his game from a knowledge of the other
girl's mind. "She'll never marry him, at any rate," he said to
himself, "and she is right. He'd make an upper servant of her; very
respectable, no doubt, but still only an upper servant. Now with
me;--well, I hardly know what I should make of her. I cannot think of
myself as a man married." Then he threw her letter after Kate's, and
betook himself to his newspaper and his cigar.

It was two hours after this, and he still wore his dressing-gown, and
he was still lounging in his easy-chair, when the waiting-maid at
the lodgings brought him up word that a gentleman wished to see him.
Vavasor kept no servant of his own except that confidential groom
down at Bicester. It was a rule with him that people could be better
served and cheaper served by other people's servants than by their
own. Even in the stables at Bicester the innkeeper had to find what
assistance was wanted, and charge for it in the bill. And George
Vavasor was no Sybarite. He did not deem it impracticable to put on
his own trousers without having a man standing at his foot to hold up
the leg of the garment. A valet about a man knows a great deal of a
man's ways, and therefore George had no valet.

"A gentleman!" said he to the girl. "Does the gentleman look like a
public-house keeper?"

"Well, I think he do," said the girl.

"Then show him up," said George.

And the gentleman was a public-house keeper. Vavasor was pretty sure
of his visitor before he desired the servant to give him entrance.
It was Mr Grimes from the "Handsome Man" public-house and tavern, in
the Brompton Road, and he had come by appointment to have a little
conversation with Mr Vavasor on matters political. Mr Grimes was
a man who knew that business was business, and as such had some
considerable weight in his own neighbourhood. With him politics was
business, as well as beer, and omnibus-horses, and foreign wines;--in
the fabrication of which latter article Mr Grimes was supposed
to have an extended experience. To such as him, when intent on
business, Mr Vavasor was not averse to make known the secrets of his
lodging-house; and now, when the idle of London world was either at
morning church or still in bed, Mr Grimes had come out by appointment