coming a swell,--a swell of such an order as could possibly be
known to Lily Dale,--must have ceased to be a mere clerk in that very
process. And, moreover, Captain Dale would not have been Damon to any
Pythias of whom it might fairly be said that he was a mere clerk. Nor
could any mere clerk have got himself in either at the Beaufort or at
Sebright's. The evidence against that former assertion made by Lily
Dale is very strong; but then the evidence as to her latter assertion
is as strong, Mr Crosbie certainly was a swell. It is true that he
was a clerk in the General Committee Office. But then, in the first
place, the General Committee Office is situated in Whitehall; whereas
poor John Eames was forced to travel daily from his lodgings in
Burton Crescent, ever so far beyond Russell Square, to his dingy room
in Somerset House. And Adolphus Crosbie, when very young, had been
a private secretary, and had afterwards mounted up in his office to
some quasi authority and senior-clerkship, bringing him in seven
hundred a year, and giving him a status among assistant secretaries
and the like, which even in an official point of view was something.
But the triumphs of Adolphus Crosbie had been other than these. Not
because he had been intimate with assistant secretaries, and was
allowed in Whitehall a room to himself with an arm-chair, would he
have been entitled to stand upon the rug at Sebright's and speak
while rich men listened,--rich men, and men also who had handles to
their names! Adolphus Crosbie had done more than make minutes with
discretion on the papers of the General Committee Office. He had set
himself down before the gates of the city of fashion, and had taken
them by storm; or, perhaps, to speak with more propriety, he had
picked the locks and let himself in. In his walks of life he was
somebody in London. A man at the West End who did not know who was
Adolphus Crosbie knew nothing. I do not say that he was the intimate
friend of many great men; but even great men acknowledged the
acquaintance of Adolphus Crosbie, and he was to be seen in the
drawing-rooms, or at any rate on the staircases, of Cabinet
Ministers.

Lilian Dale, dear Lily Dale--for my reader must know that she is to
be very dear, and that my story will be nothing to him if he do not
love Lily Dale--Lilian Dale had discovered that Mr Crosbie was a
swell. But I am bound to say that Mr Crosbie did not habitually
proclaim the fact in any offensive manne