the Russian spy, and it had been declared
strongly by the latter captain, and ultimately admitted by the former,
that those results were not satisfactory. Seventy pounds had been
expended, and, so to say, nothing had been accomplished. It was in vain
that Archie, unwilling to have it thought that he had been worsted in
diplomacy, argued that with these political personages, and especially
with Russian political personages, the ambages were everything--that the
preliminaries were in fact the whole, and that when they were arranged,
the thing was done. Doodles proved to demonstration that the thing was
not done, and that seventy pounds was too much for mere preliminaries.
"My dear fellow," he said, speaking, I fear, with some scorn in his
voice, "where are you? That's what I want to know. Where are you? Just
nowhere." This was true. All that Archie had received from Madam
Gordeloup in return for his last payment, was an intimation that no
immediate day could be at present named for a renewal of his personal
attack upon the countess; but that a day might be named when he should
next come to Mount Street--provision, of course, being made that he
should come with a due qualification under his glove. Now, the original
basis on which Archie was to carry on his suit had been arranged to be
this--that Lady Ongar should be made to know that he was there; and the
way in which Doodles had illustrated this precept by the artistic and
allegorical use of his heel was still fresh in Archie's memory. The
meeting in which they had come to that satisfactory understanding had
taken place early in the Spring, and now June was coming on, and the
countess certainly did not as yet know that her suitor was there! If
anything was to be done by the Russian spy it should be done quickly,
and Doodles did not refrain from expressing his opinion that his friend
was "putting his foot into it," and "making a mull of the whole thing."
Now Archie Clavering was a man not eaten up by the vice of
self-confidence, but prone rather to lean upon his friends, and anxious
for the aid of counsel in difficulty.

"What the devil is a fellow to do?" he asked. "Perhaps I had better give
it all up. Everybody says that she is as proud as Lucifer; and, after
all, nobody knows what rigs she has been up to."

But this was by no means the view which Doodles was inclined to take. He
was a man who in the field never gave up a race because he was thrown
out at the start, hav