“But you can’t say she’s respectable, you know.  If I was a spirit, I wouldn’t go to a woman who wore such dirty stockings as she had on.”

“That’s nonsense, Clavvy.  What does a spirit care about a woman’s stockings?”

“But why don’t they ever go to the wise people? that’s what I want to know.”  And as he asked the question boldly he struck his ball sharply, and, lo! the three balls rolled vanquished into three different pockets.  “I don’t believe about it,” said Archie, as he readjusted the score.  “The devil can’t do such things as that, or there’d be an end of everything; and as to spirits in the air, why should there be more spirits now than there were four-and-twenty years ago?”

“That’s all very well, old fellow,” said Doodles, “but you and I ain’t clever enough to understand everything.”  Then that subject was dropped, and Doodles went back for a while to the perils of Jack Stuart’s yacht.

After the lunch, which was, in fact, Archie’s early dinner, Doodles was going to leave his friend, but Archie insisted that his brother captain should walk with him up to Berkeley Square, and see the last of him into his cab.  Doodles had suggested that Sir Hugh would be there, and that Sir Hugh was not always disposed to welcome his brother’s friends to his own house after the most comfortable modes of friendship; but Archie explained that on such an occasion as this there need be no fear on that head; he and his brother were going away together, and there was a certain feeling of jollity about the trip which would divest Sir Hugh of his roughness.  “And besides,” said Archie, “as you will be there to see me off; he’ll know that you’re not going to stay yourself.”  Convinced by this, Doodles consented to walk up to Berkeley Square.

Sir Hugh had spent the greatest part of this day at home, immersed among his guns and rods, and their various appurtenances.  He also had breakfasted at his club, but had ordered his luncheon to be prepared for him at home.  He had arranged to leave Berkeley Square at four, and had directed that his lamb chops should be brought to him exactly at three.  He was himself a little late in coming down stairs, and it was ten minutes past the hour when he desired that the chops might be put on the table, saying that he himself would be in the drawing-room in time to meet them.  He was a man solicitous about his lamb chops, and careful that the asparagus should be hot—­solicitous also as to that bottle of Lafitte by which those comestibles were to be accompanied, and which was, of its own nature, too good to be shared with his brother Archie.  But as he was on the landing by the drawing-room door, descending quickly, conscious that, in obedience to his orders, the chops had been already served, he was met by a servant who, with disturbed face and quick voice, told him that there was a lady waiting for him in the hall.

“D——­ it,” said Sir Hugh.

“She has just come, Sir Hugh, and says that she specially wants to see you.”