“Oh! an accident!” said the woman, who knew well that that mark had been made by another man’s fist.  “They do say that a bit of raw beef is about the best thing.  But then it must be held on constant all the morning.”

Anything would be better than leeches, which tell long-enduring tales, and therefore Crosbie sat through the greater part of the morning holding the raw beef to his eye.  But it was necessary that he should write two notes as he held it, one to Mr Butterwell at his office, and the other to his future sister-in-law.  He felt that it would hardly be wise to attempt any entire concealment of the nature of his catastrophe, as some of the circumstances would assuredly become known.  If he said that he had fallen over the coal-scuttle, or on to the fender, thereby cutting his face, people would learn that he had fibbed, and would learn also that he had had some reason for fibbing.  Therefore he constructed his notes with a phraseology that bound him to no details.  To Butterwell he said that he had had an accident,—­or rather a row,—­and that he had come out of it with considerable damage to his frontispiece.  He intended to be at the office on the next day, whether able to appear decently there or not.  But for the sake of decency he thought it well to give himself that one half-day’s chance.  Then to the Lady Amelia he also said that he had had an accident, and had been a little hurt.  “It is nothing at all serious, and affects only my appearance, so that I had better remain in for a day.  I shall certainly be with you on Sunday.  Don’t let Gazebee trouble himself to come to me, as I shan’t be at home after to-day.”  Gazebee did trouble himself to come to Mount Street so often, and South Audley Street, in which was Mr Gazebee’s office, was so disagreeably near to Mount Street, that Crosbie inserted this in order to protect himself if possible.  Then he gave special orders that he was to be at home to no one, fearing that Gazebee would call for him after the hours of business—­to make him safe and carry him off bodily to St. John’s Wood.

The beefsteak and the dose of physic and the cold-water application which was kept upon it all night was not efficacious in dispelling that horrid, black-blue colour by ten o’clock on the following morning.

“It certainly have gone down, Mr Crosbie; it certainly have,” said the mistress of the lodgings, touching the part affected with her finger.  “But the black won’t go out of them all in a minute; it won’t indeed.  Couldn’t you just stay in one more day?”

“But will one day do it, Mrs Phillips?”

Mrs Phillips couldn’t take upon herself to say that it would.  “They mostly come with little red streaks across the black before they goes away,” said Mrs Phillips, who would seem to have been the wife of a prize-fighter, so well was she acquainted with black eyes.

“And that won’t be till to-morrow,” said Crosbie, affecting to be mirthful in his agony.