on earth
should Jack Belsize, haggard, wild, having been winning great sums, it
was said, at Hombourg, forsake his luck there, and run over frantically
to Baden? He wore a great thick beard, a great slouched hat--he
looked like nothing more or less than a painter or an Italian brigand.
Unsuspecting Clive, remembering the jolly dinner which Jack had procured
for him at the Guards' mess in St. James's, whither Jack himself came
from the Horse Guards--simple Clive, seeing Jack enter the town, hailed
him cordially, and invited him to dinner, and Jack accepted, and Clive
told him all the news he had of the place; how Kew was there, and Lady
Anne Newcome, and Ethel; and Barnes was coming. "I am not very fond of
him either," says Clive, smiling, when Belsize mentioned his name. So
Barnes was coming to marry that pretty little Lady Clara Pulleyn. The
knowing youth! I dare say he was rather pleased with his knowledge of
the fashionable world, and the idea that Jack Belsize would think he,
too, was somebody.

Jack drank an immense quantity of champagne, and the dinner over, as
they could hear the band playing from Clive's open windows in the
snug clean little Hotel de France, Jack proposed they should go on
the promenade. M. de Florac was of the party; he had been exceedingly
jocular when Lord Kew's name was mentioned, and said, "Ce petit Kiou!
M. le Duc d'Ivry, mon oncle, l'honore d'une amitie toute particuliere."
These three gentlemen walked out; the promenade was crowded, the was
band playing "Home, sweet Home" very sweetly, and the very first persons
they met on the walk were the Lords of Kew and Dorking, on the arm of
which latter venerable peer his daughter Lady Clara was hanging.

Jack Belsize, in a velvet coat, with a sombrero slouched over his face,
with a beard reaching to his waist, was, no doubt, not recognised at
first by the noble lord of Dorking, for he was greeting the other two
gentlemen with his usual politeness and affability; when, of a sudden,
Lady Clara looking up, gave a little shriek and fell down lifeless on
the gravel walk. Then the old earl recognised Mr. Belsize, and Clive
heard him say, "You villain, how dare you come here?"

Belsize had flung himself down to lift up Clara, calling her frantically
by her name, when old Dorking sprang to seize him.

"Hands off, my lord," said the other, shaking the old man from his back.
"Confound you, Jack, hold your tongue," roars out Kew. Clive runs for a
chair