much troubled to understand.

"In what way am I to construe your attitude, sir?" demanded Vandeleur.

"Why, sir, as you please," returned Pendragon.

The General once more raised his cane, and made a cut for Charlie's
head; but the latter, lame foot and all, evaded the blow with his
umbrella, ran in, and immediately closed with his formidable adversary.

"Run, Harry, run!" he cried; "run, you dolt!"

Harry stood petrified for a moment, watching the two men sway together
in this fierce embrace; then he turned and took to his heels. When he
cast a glance over his shoulder he saw the General prostrate under
Charlie's knee, but still making desperate efforts to reverse the
situation; and the Gardens seemed to have filled with people, who were
running from all directions towards the scene of fight. This spectacle
lent the secretary wings; and he did not relax his pace until he had
gained the Bayswater Road, and plunged at random into an unfrequented
by-street.

To see two gentlemen of his acquaintance thus brutally mauling each
other was deeply shocking to Harry. He desired to forget the sight; he
desired, above all, to put as great a distance as possible between
himself and General Vandeleur; and in his eagerness for this he forgot
everything about his destination, and hurried before him headlong and
trembling. When he remembered that Lady Vandeleur was the wife of one
and the sister of the other of these gladiators, his heart was touched
with sympathy for a woman so distressingly misplaced in life. Even his
own situation in the General's household looked hardly so pleasing as
usual in the light of these violent transactions.

He had walked some little distance, busied with these meditations,
before a slight collision with another passenger reminded him of the
bandbox on his arm.

"Heavens!" cried he, "where was my head? and whither have I wandered?"

Thereupon he consulted the envelope which Lady Vandeleur had given him.
The address was there, but without a name. Harry was simply directed to
ask for "the gentleman who expected a parcel from Lady Vandeleur," and
if he were not at home to await his return. The gentleman, added the
note, should present a receipt in the handwriting of the lady herself.
All this seemed mightily mysterious, and Harry was above all astonished
at the omission of the name and the formality of the receipt. He had
thought little of this last when he heard it dropped in conversation;
but rea