“His name, Fred?” said Comyn, with a smile at me.

“’Sdeath!  That’s it.  Trouble to remember.  Damned if I can think.”  And he repeated this remark over and over.

“Allen?” said Comyn.

“Yes,” said Baltimore; “Allen.  And egad I think he’ll find hell a hotter place than me.  You know him, Mr. Carvel?”

“Yes,” I replied.  I said no more.  I make no reservations when I avow I was never so disgusted in my life.  But as I looked upon him, haggard and worn, with retribution so neat at hand, I had no words to protest or condemn.

Baltimore gave a hollow mirthless laugh, stopped short, and looked at Charles Fox.

“Curse you, Charles!  I suppose you are after that little matter I owe you for quinze.”

“Damn the little matter!” said Fox.  “Come, get you perfumed and dressed, and order up some of your Tokay while we wait.  I have to go to St. Stephens.  Mr. Carvel has come to buy your horse Pollux.  He has bet Chartersea two hundred guineas he rides him for twenty minutes.”

“The devil he has!” cried his Lordship, jaded no longer.  “Why, you must know, Mr. Carvel, there was no groom in my stables who would sit him until Foley made me a present of his man, Miller, who started to ride him to Hyde Park.  As he came out of Great Russell Street, by gads life! the horse broke and ran out the Tottenham Court Road all the way to Hampstead.  And the fiend picked out a big stone water trough and tossed Miller against it.  Then they gathered up the fragments.  Damme if I like to see suicide, Mr. Carvel.  If Chartersea wants to kill you, let him try it in the fields behind Montagu House here.”

I told his Lordship that I had made the wager, and could not in honour withdraw, though the horse had killed a dozen grooms.  But already he seemed to have lost interest.  He gave a languid pull at the velvet tassel on his bell-rope, ordered the wine; and, being informed that his anteroom below was full of people, had them all dismissed with the message that he was engaged upon important affairs.  He told Mr. Fox he had heard of the Jerusalem Chamber, and vowed he would have a like institution.  He told me he wished the colony of Maryland in hell; that he was worn out with the quarrels of Governor Eden and his Assembly, and offered to lay a guinea that the Governor’s agent would get to him that day,—­will-he, nill-he.  I did not think it worth while to argue with such a man.

My Lord took three-quarters of an hour to dress, and swore he had not accomplished the feat so quickly in a year.  He washed his hands and face in a silver basin, and the scent of the soap filled the room.  He rated his Swiss for putting cinnamon upon his ruffles in place of attar of roses, and attempted to regale us the while with some of his choicest adventures.  In more than one of these, by the way, his Grace of Chartersea figured.  It was Fox who brought him up.

“See here, Baltimore,” he said, “I’m not squeamish.  But I’m cursed if I like to hear a man who may die any time between bottles talk so.”