“Make her know that you’re there; that’s everything,” said Doodles.  “Since I fathomed that woman in Mount Street, I’ve felt that you must make the score off your own bat, if you’re to make it at all.”

“You did that well,” said Archie, who knew that the amount of pleasing encouragement which he might hope to get from his friend, must depend on the praise which he himself should bestow.  “Yes; you certainly did bowl her over uncommon well.”

“That kind of thing just comes within my line,” said Doodles, with conscious pride.  “Now, as to asking Lady Ongar downright to marry me—­upon my word I believe I should be half afraid of doing it myself.”

“I’ve none of that kind of feeling,” said Archie.

“It comes more in your way, I daresay,” said Doodles.  “But for me, what I like is a little bit of management—­what I call a touch of the diplomatic.  You’ll be able to see her to-morrow?”

“I hope so.  I shall go early—­that is, as soon as I’ve looked through the papers and written a few letters.  Yes, I think she’ll see me.  And as for what Hugh says about Harry Clavering, why, d——­ it, you know, a fellow can’t go on in that way; can he?”

“Because of the other girl, you mean?”

“He has had her down among all our people, just as though they were going to be married to-morrow.  If a man is to do that kind of thing, what woman can be safe?”

“I wonder whether she likes him?” asked the crafty Doodles.

“She did like him, I fancy, in her calf days; but that means nothing.  She knows what she’s at now, bless you, and she’ll look to the future.  It’s my son who’ll have the Clavering property and be the baronet, not his.  You see what a string to my bow that is.”

When this banquet was over, Doodles made something of a resolution that it should be the last to be eaten on that subject.  The matter had lost its novelty, and the price paid to him was not sufficient to secure his attention any longer.  “I shall be here to-morrow at four,” he said, as he rose from his chair with the view of retreating to the smoking-room, “and then we shall know all about it.”

“Whichever way it’s to be, it isn’t worth your while keeping such a thing as that in hand any longer.  I should say give her her chance to-morrow, and then have done with it.”  Archie in reply to this declared that those were exactly his sentiments, and then went away to prepare himself in silence and solitude for the next day’s work.

On the following day at two o’clock Lady Ongar was sitting alone in the front room on the ground-floor in Bolton Street.  Of Harry Clavering’s illness she had as yet heard nothing, nor of his absence from London.  She had not seen him since he had parted from her on that evening when he had asked her to be his wife, and the last words she had heard from his lips had made this request.  She. indeed, had then bade him be true to her rival—­to Florence Burton.  She had told him this in spite