Mr. Guppy, looking as if he would give his own reddening and still reddening ears to be one of those people at present instead of himself, replies, “Sir, if I attend to my profession and do what is right by Kenge and Carboy, my friends and acquaintances are of no consequence to them nor to any member of the profession, not excepting Mr. Tulkinghorn of the Fields.  I am not under any obligation to explain myself further; and with all respect for you, sir, and without offence—­I repeat, without offence—­”

“Oh, certainly!”

“—­I don’t intend to do it.”

“Quite so,” says Mr. Tulkinghorn with a calm nod.  “Very good; I see by these portraits that you take a strong interest in the fashionable great, sir?”

He addresses this to the astounded Tony, who admits the soft impeachment.

“A virtue in which few Englishmen are deficient,” observes Mr. Tulkinghorn.  He has been standing on the hearthstone with his back to the smoked chimney-piece, and now turns round with his glasses to his eyes.  “Who is this?  ‘Lady Dedlock.’  Ha!  A very good likeness in its way, but it wants force of character.  Good day to you, gentlemen; good day!”

When he has walked out, Mr. Guppy, in a great perspiration, nerves himself to the hasty completion of the taking down of the Galaxy Gallery, concluding with Lady Dedlock.

“Tony,” he says hurriedly to his astonished companion, “let us be quick in putting the things together and in getting out of this place.  It were in vain longer to conceal from you, Tony, that between myself and one of the members of a swan-like aristocracy whom I now hold in my hand, there has been undivulged communication and association.  The time might have been when I might have revealed it to you.  It never will be more.  It is due alike to the oath I have taken, alike to the shattered idol, and alike to circumstances over which I have no control, that the whole should be buried in oblivion.  I charge you as a friend, by the interest you have ever testified in the fashionable intelligence, and by any little advances with which I may have been able to accommodate you, so to bury it without a word of inquiry!”

This charge Mr. Guppy delivers in a state little short of forensic lunacy, while his friend shows a dazed mind in his whole head of hair and even in his cultivated whiskers.

CHAPTER XL

National and Domestic

England has been in a dreadful state for some weeks.  Lord Coodle would go out, Sir Thomas Doodle wouldn’t come in, and there being nobody in Great Britain (to speak of) except Coodle and Doodle, there has been no government.  It is a mercy that the hostile meeting between those two great men, which at one time seemed inevitable, did not come off, because if both pistols had taken effect, and Coodle and Doodle had killed each other, it is to be presumed that England