“Oh, no!” I cried, scarce knowing what I said; “no, not there!” For the thought of entering the house in Arlington Street was unbearable.

Both Comyn and Dorothy gazed at me in astonishment.

“And pray, Richard, why not’?” she asked.  “Have not your old friends the right to receive you.”

It was my Lord who saved me, for I was in agony what to say.

“He is still proud, and won’t go to Arlington Street dressed like a bargeman.  He must needs plume, Miss Manners.”

I glanced anxiously at Dorothy, and saw that she was neither satisfied nor appeased.  Well I remembered every turn of her head, and every curve of her lip!  In the meantime we were off through Cursitor Street at a gallop, nearly causing the death of a ragged urchin at the corner of Chancery Lane.  I had forgotten my eagerness to know whence they had heard of my plight, when some words from Comyn aroused me.

“The carriage is Mr. Horace Walpole’s, Richard.  He has taken a great fancy to you.”

“But I have never so much as clapped eyes upon him!” I exclaimed in perplexity.

“How about his honour with whom you supped at Windsor? how about the landlord you spun by the neck?  You should have heard the company laugh when Horry told us that!  And Miss Dolly cried out that she was sure it must be Richard, and none other.  Is it not so, Miss Manners?”

“Really, my Lord, I can’t remember,” replied Dolly, looking out of the coach window.  “Who put those frightful skulls upon Temple Bar?”

Then the mystery of their coming was clear to me, and the superior gentleman at the Castle Inn had been the fashionable dabbler in arts and letters and architecture of Strawberry Hill, of whom I remembered having heard Dr. Courtenay speak, Horace Walpole.  But I was then far too concerned about Dorothy to listen to more.  Her face was still turned away from me, and she was silent.  I could have cut out my tongue for my blunder.  Presently, when we were nearly out of the Strand, she turned upon me abruptly.

“We have not yet heard, Richard,” she said, “how you got into such a predicament.”

“Indeed, I don’t know myself, Dolly.  Some scoundrel bribed the captain of the slaver.  For I take it Mr. Walpole has told you I was carried off on a slaver, if he recalled that much of the story.”

“I don’t mean that,” answered Dolly, impatiently.  “There is something strange about all this.  How is it that you were in prison?”

“Mr. Dix, my grandfather’s agent, took me for an impostor and would advance me no money,” I answered, hard pushed.

But Dorothy had a woman’s instinct, which is often the best of understanding.  And I was beginning to think that a suspicion was at the bottom of her questions.  She gave her head an impatient fling, and, as I feared, appealed to John Paul.

“Perhaps you can tell me, captain, why he did not come to his friends in his trouble.”