that of the husband. Once or twice in every year exposure and ruin

seemed imminent, and Harry kept trotting round to all sorts of
furnishers' shops, telling small fibs, and paying small advances on

the gross amount, until another term was tided over, and the lady
and her faithful secretary breathed again. For Harry, in a double

capacity, was heart and soul upon that side of the war: not only
did he adore Lady Vandeleur and fear and dislike her husband, but

he naturally sympathised with the love of finery, and his own
single extravagance was at the tailor's.

He found the bandbox where it had been described, arranged his
toilette with care, and left the house. The sun shone brightly;

the distance he had to travel was considerable, and he remembered
with dismay that the General's sudden irruption had prevented Lady

Vandeleur from giving him money for a cab. On this sultry day
there was every chance that his complexion would suffer severely;

and to walk through so much of London with a bandbox on his arm was
a humiliation almost insupportable to a youth of his character. He

paused, and took counsel with himself. The Vandeleurs lived in
Eaton Place; his destination was near Notting Hill; plainly, he

might cross the Park by keeping well in the open and avoiding
populous alleys; and he thanked his stars when he reflected that it

was still comparatively early in the day.
Anxious to be rid of his incubus, he walked somewhat faster than

his ordinary, and he was already some way through Kensington
Gardens when, in a solitary spot among trees, he found himself

confronted by the General.
"I beg your pardon, Sir Thomas," observed Harry, politely falling

on one side; for the other stood directly in his path.
"Where are you going, sir?" asked the General.

"I am taking a little walk among the trees," replied the lad.
The General struck the bandbox with his cane.

"With that thing?" he cried; "you lie, sir, and you know you lie!"
"Indeed, Sir Thomas," returned Harry, "I am not accustomed to be

questioned in so high a key."
"You do not understand your position," said the General. "You are

my servant, and a servant of whom I have conceived the most serious
suspicions. How do I know but that your box is full of teaspoons?"

"It contains a silk hat belonging to a friend," said Harry.
"Very well," replied General Vandeleur. "Then I want to see your

friend's silk hat. I have," he added grimly, "a singular curiosity
for hats; and I believe you know me to be somewhat positive."

"I beg your pardon, Sir Thomas, I am exceedingly grieved," Harry
apologised; "but indeed this is a private affair."

The General caught him roughly by the shoulder with one hand, while
he raised his cane in the most menacing manner with the other.

Harry gave himself up for lost; but at the same moment Heaven
vouchsafed him an unexpecteddefender in the person of Charlie

Pendragon, who now strode forward from behind the trees.
"Come, come, General, hold your hand," said he, "this is neither

courteous nor manly."
"Aha!" cried the General, wheeling round upon his new antagonist,

"Mr. Pendragon! And do you suppose, Mr. Pendragon, that because I
have had the misfortune to marry your sister, I shall suffer myself

to be dogged and thwarted by a discredited and bankrupt libertine
like you? My acquaintance with Lady Vandeleur, sir, has taken away

all my appetite for the other members of her family."
"And do you fancy, General Vandeleur," retorted Charlie, "that

because my sister has had the misfortune to marry you, she there
and then forfeited her rights and privileges as a lady? I own,

sir, that by that action she did as much as anybody could to
derogate from her position; but to me she is still a Pendragon. I

make it my business to protect her from ungentlemanly outrage, and
if you were ten times her husband I would not permit her liberty to

be restrained, nor her private messengers to be violently
arrested."

"How is that, Mr. Hartley?" interrogated the General. "Mr.
Pendragon is of my opinion, it appears. He too suspects that Lady

Vandeleur has something to do with your friend's silk hat."
Charlie saw that he had committed an unpardonable blunder, which he

hastened to repair.
"How, sir?" he cried; "I suspect, do you say? I suspect nothing.

Only where I find strength abused and a man brutalising his
inferiors, I take the liberty to interfere."

As he said these words he made a sign to Harry, which the latter
was too dull or too much troubled to understand.

"In what way am I to construe your attitude, sir?" demanded
Vandeleur.

"Why, sir, as you please," returned Pendragon.
The General once more raised his cane, and made a cut for Charlie's

head; but the latter, lame foot and all, evaded the blow with his
umbrella, ran in, and immediately closed with his formidable

adversary.
"Run, Harry, run!" he cried; "run, you dolt! Harry stood petrified

for a moment, watching the two men sway together in this fierce
embrace; then he turned and took to his heels. When he cast a

glance over his shoulder he saw the General prostrate under
Charlie's knee, but still making desperate efforts to reverse the

situation; and the Gardens seemed to have filled with people, who
were running from all directions towards the scene of fight. This

spectacle lent the secretary wings; and he did not relax his pace
until he had gained the Bayswater road, and plunged at random into

an unfrequented by-street.
To see two gentlemen of his acquaintance thus brutally mauling each

other was deeply shocking to Harry. He desired to forget the
sight; he desired, above all, to put as great a distance as

possible between himself and General Vandeleur; and in his
eagerness for this he forgot everything about his destination, and

hurried before him headlong and trembling. When he remembered that
Lady Vandeleur was the wife of one and the sister of the other of

these gladiators, his heart was touched with sympathy for a woman
so distressingly misplaced in life. Even his own situation in the

General's household looked hardly so pleasing as usual in the light
of these violent transactions.

He had walked some little distance, busied with these meditations,
before a slight collision with another passenger reminded him of

the bandbox on his arm.
"Heavens!" cried he, "where was my head? and whither have I

wandered?"
Thereupon he consulted the envelope which Lady Vandeleur had given

him. The address was there, but without a name. Harry was simply
directed to ask for "the gentleman who expected a parcel from Lady

Vandeleur," and if he were not at home to await his return. The
gentleman, added the note, should present a receipt in the

handwriting of the lady herself. All this seemed mightily
mysterious, and Harry was above all astonished at the omission of

the name and the formality of the receipt. He had thought little
of this last when he heard it dropped in conversation; but reading

it in cold blood, and taking it in connection with the other
strange particulars, he became convinced that he was engaged in

perilous affairs. For half a moment he had a doubt of Lady
Vandeleur herself; for he found these obscure proceedings somewhat

unworthy of so high a lady, and became more critical when her
secrets were preserved against himself. But her empire over his

spirit was too complete, he dismissed his suspicions, and blamed
himself roundly for having so much as entertained them.

In one thing, however, his duty and interest, his generosity and