We had not long to wait.  The next arrival was he whom we sought.  We strolled on, as before, and came upon him face to face.

“De Simoncourt, by all that’s propitious!” cried Dalrymple.

“What—­Major Dalrymple returned to Paris!”

“Ay, just returned.  Bored to death with Berlin and Vienna—­no place like Paris, De Simoncourt, go where one will!”

“None, indeed.  There is but one Paris, and pleasure is the true profit of all who visit it.”

“My dear De Simoncourt, I am appalled to hear you perpetrate a pun!  By the way, you have met Mr. Basil Arbuthnot at my rooms?”

M. de Simoncourt lifted his hat, and was graciously pleased to remember the circumstance.

“And now,” pursued Dalrymple, “having met, what shall, we do next?  Have you any engagement for the small hours, De Simoncourt?”

“I am quite at your disposal.  Where were your bound for?”

“Anywhere—­everywhere.  I want excitement.”

“Would a hand at ecarte, or a green table, have any attraction for you?” suggested De Simoncourt, falling into the trap as readily as one could have desired.

“The very thing, if you know where they are to be found!”

“Nay, I need not take you far to find both.  There is in this very street a house where money may be lost and won as easily as at the Bourse.  Follow me.”

He took us to the white house at the corner, and, pressing a spring concealed in the wood-work of the lintel, rung a bell of shrill and peculiar timbre.  The door opened immediately, and, after we had passed in, closed behind us without any visible agency.  Still following at the heels of M. de Simoncourt, we then went up a spacious staircase dimly lighted, and, leaving our hats in an ante-room, entered unannounced into an elegant salon, where some twenty or thirty habitues of both sexes had already commenced the business of the evening.  The ladies, of whom there were not more than half-a-dozen, were all more or less painted, passees, and showily dressed.  Among the men were military stocks, ribbons, crosses, stars, and fine titles in abundance.  We were evidently supposed to be in very brilliant society—­brilliant, however, with a fictitious lustre that betrayed the tinsel beneath, and reminded one of a fashionable reception on the boards of the Haymarket or the Porte St. Martin.  The mistress of the house, an abundant and somewhat elderly Juno in green velvet, with a profusion of jewelry on her arms and bosom, came forward to receive us.

“Madame de Sainte Amaranthe, permit me to present my friends, Major Dalrymple and Mr. Arbuthnot,” said De Simoncourt, imprinting a gallant kiss on the plump hand of the hostess.