“Yes, sir, it is,” said the superintendent; “and I shall know how to represent the matter to your superiors, young man.”

“You don’t know all about it,” said Eames; “and I don’t suppose you ever will.  I had made up my mind what I’d do the first time I saw that scoundrel there; and now I’ve done it.  He’d have got much worse in the railway carriage, only there was a lady there.”

“Mr Crosbie, I really think we had better take him before the magistrates.”

To this, however, Crosbie objected.  He assured the superintendent that he would himself know how to deal with the matter—­which, however, was exactly what he did not know.  Would the superintendent allow one of the railway servants to get a cab for him, and to find his luggage?  He was very anxious to get home without being subjected to any more of Mr Eames’s insolence.

“You haven’t done with Mr Eames’s insolence yet, I can tell you.  All London shall hear of it, and shall know why.  If you have any shame in you, you shall be ashamed to show your face.”

Unfortunate man!  Who can say that punishment,—­adequate punishment,—­had not overtaken him?  For the present, he had to sneak home with a black eye, with the knowledge inside him that he had been whipped by a clerk in the Income-tax Office; and for the future—­he was bound over to marry Lady Alexandrina de Courcy!

He got himself smuggled off in a cab, without being forced to go again upon the platform—­his luggage being brought to him by two assiduous porters.  But in all this there was very little balm for his hurt pride.  As he ordered the cabman to drive to Mount Street, he felt that he had ruined himself by that step in life which he had taken at Courcy Castle.  Whichever way he looked he had no comfort.  “D——­ the fellow!” he said, almost out loud in the cab; but though he did with his outward voice allude to Eames, the curse in his inner thoughts was uttered against himself.

Johnny was allowed to make his way down to the platform, and there find his own carpet-bag.  One young porter, however, came up and fraternised with him.

“You guve it him tidy just at that last moment, sir.  But, laws, sir, you should have let out at him at fust.  What’s the use of clawing a man’s neck-collar?”

It was then a quarter past eleven, but, nevertheless, Eames appeared at his office precisely at twelve.

CHAPTER XXXV

Vae Victis

Crosbie had two engagements for that day; one being his natural engagement to do his work at his office, and the other an engagement, which was now very often becoming as natural, to dine at St. John’s Wood with Lady Amelia Gazebee.  It was manifest to him when he looked at himself in the glass hat he could keep neither of these engagements.  “Oh, laws, Mr Crosbie,” the woman of the house exclaimed when she saw him.

“Yes, I know,” said he.  “I’ve had an accident and got a black eye.  What’s a good thing for it?”