ng of it; and he
passed his old arm under mine--and we went out to Tom's Coffee-House,
and he ate some dinner the first time for ever so long, and drank a
couple of glasses of port wine, and F. B. stood it, sir, and would stand
his heart's blood that dear old boy."

It was on a Monday morning that those melancholy shutters were seen over
the offices of the Bundelcund Bank in Lothbury, which were not to come
down until the rooms were handed over to some other, and, let us trust,
more fortunate speculators. The Indian bills had arrived, and been
protested in the City on the previous Saturday. The Campaigner and Mrs.
Rosey had arranged a little party to the theatre that evening, and the
gallant Captain Goby had agreed to quit the delights of the Flag
Club, in order to accompany the ladies. Neither of them knew what was
happening in the City, or could account otherwise than by the common
domestic causes, for Clive's gloomy despondency and his father's sad
reserve. Clive had not been in the City on this day. He had spent it,
as usual, in his studio, boude by his wife, and not disturbed by the
messroom raillery of the Campaigner. They had dined early, in order to
be in time for the theatre. Goby entertained them with the latest jokes
from the smoking-room at the Flag, and was in his turn amused by the
brilliant plans for the season which Rosey and her mamma sketched out
the entertainments which Mrs. Clive proposed to give, the ball--she was
dying for a masked ball just such a one as that was described in the
Pall Mall Gazette of last week, out of that paper with the droll title,
the Bengal Hurkaru, which the merchant-prince, the head of the bank, you
know, in India, had given at Calcutta. "We must have a ball, too," says
Mrs. Mackenzie; "society demands it of you." "Of course it does,"
echoes Captain Goby, and he bethought him of a brilliant circle of young
fellows from the Flag, whom he would bring in splendid uniform to dance
with the pretty Mrs. Clive Newcome.

After the dinner--they little knew it was to be their last in that fine
house--the ladies retired to give their parting kiss to baby--a parting
look to the toilettes, with which they proposed to fascinate the
inhabitants of the pit and the public boxes at the Olympic. Goby made
vigorous play with the claret-bottle during the brief interval of
potation allowed to him; he, too, little deeming that he should never
drink bumper there again; Clive looking on with the me