"My dear fellow, I want him between this
and five in the morning, for as much as ready
money and I.O.U.s payable within four-and
twenty hours, will give me."

The Guardsman whistled. " You've been hit
rather hard, Blunt, lately," he remarked, "and
you want your innings, I suppose? Well,
Debonnair is as good as another, I suppose.
Only don't knock him down as though you were
pitching at the pins in a skittle alley. Let him
down softly, poor lad. Let him fall on a feather
bed."

"Have you so much sympathy for him?''

'' "Well, he's only a boy, you know. It's a pity
to knock him down all at oiice, because—  because,
you know, he's young, and there's a good deal
more plucking about him—and if you skin him
alive all at once, he might get sick of the thing,
and turn steady."

"I see. Well, you shall have him when I've
done with him. There'll be plenty of pickings
left, I'll promise you."

"Deuce doubt you. Do you want any fellow
to-night in with you?"

"Thanks, not one. Lord Henry Debonnair
and self; that's all."

"And old Nick as double dummy. Well, I've
no wish to spoil sport. Good digestion wait on
appetite, and luck on both, and a pot full of
ready on all three. What do you go in for? The
bones?"

"No; not for serious business. We must, for
form's sake, have an hour at Crockey's, but the
real affair must come off at the count's. I want
him at King John, in a side-room, while the rest
of you fellows are deep at hazard. Debonnair,
how are you, old fellow?"

All this, save the concluding salutation, had
been uttered in the discreetest whisper; but,
"Debonnair, how are you, old fellow?" was voiced
in the bland and cheery tone of which Francis
Blunt, Esquire, was an admirable master.

"The Griffin means mischief to-night," Mr.
Laughorne, of the Guards, cursorily remarked a
few moments afterwards to Lord Claude
Mounthawkington.

"Oh! confound him," replied the dandy
addressed, who was a younger son of a poor
nobleman, and had been ruined too early: "he
always does mean mischief after midnight. He
has had me many a time, and for many a thousand.
How in the world does he manage it? He
plays on the square, I s'pose?"

"On the squarest of squares. A perfect cube.
He's the soul of honour, my dear fellow. I'm
peckish, and want some oysters and stout."
And Mr. Langhorne, of the Guards, passed on.

"Debonnair, old fellow, how are you?"

Lord Henry Debonnair liked to be called " old
fellow." He was very young. He was a boy. He
bad a fair round smooth face, quite innocent
and blooming. His russet hair curled about an
unfurrowed brow. His blue eyes were cloudless,
His pretty lips seemed quite untainted by
contact with pollution. How should they be?
If the inclinations of his secret soul had been
laid bare, the discovery that he was still fond of
lollipops, and never passed an apple-stall without
longing to pilfer a couple of the rosy-cheeked
fruit of the dozing Irishwoman to whom they
belonged, might have been made. He smoked,
and the act of fumigation made him very sick;
but he continued to smoke, almost without
intermision, because the other fellows did it, and it
was the thing.

It was likewise the thing, in those days, to
drink; so Lord Henry Debonnair drank
champagne, Moselle, Tokay, soda- and-B., and not
unfrequently the fortifying but stupifying dog's-
nose with the friendly cabman, or the enlivening
but poisonous Geneva with the convivial
gladiator, or affable hanger-on of the prize-ring.
It was ftie thing in the reign of King William
the Fourth, to associate with cabmen and
pugilists. As Lord Henry's little head was very
weak, intoxication, in its most demonstrative
form, was of by no means rare occurrence with
him; and he had been at least half a dozen
times locked up in various metropolitan station-
houses, and the next morning fined five shillings.
It was the thing to be locked up at night, and
banter the police magistrate in the morning,

He had always—from reason's first dawn at
least—experienced considerable difficulty in
settling, to his own satisfaction, that two and two
made four. But he kept a voluminous betting-
book, and backed the favourite, or laid against
the field, for all sorts of events, double and single,
to the extent of some thousands of pounds
yearly. He betted as he gambled, as he drank,
as he did worse, as he went to prize-fights and
cock-fights and ratting matches, as he drove a
four-in-hand (he who was hardly out of a go-
cart), as he kept race-horses and bulldogs:
not because he cared much about those amusements,
or those luxuries—for next to lollipops
his most pronounced taste was for boiled mutton
and turnips, suet-pudding, and ginger-beer
—but because it was the "thing" among the
"set" to which he belonged. He was very lazy,
very thoughtless, and very profligate, because it
was the thing to be so, and he had never done,
and never intended, any harm to any living
creature. Lord Henry Debonnair belonged to a
class common enough in the reign of William
the Fourth, but whose type in the reign of
Queen Victoria is extinct .

Francis Blunt, Esquire, had twisted this
young nobleman round his finger. He had
passed a silken string through his nose, and
led him by it, with perfect ease and comfort to
both parties. He was far too clever to toady the
young lord. He patronised him. Lord Henry
looked up to him, with implicit trust and
confidence, as guide, philosopher, and friend.  He
recognised all the attraction of Griffin Blunt's
brilliant depravity. He felt, in his boyish mind,
proud to know so experienced a profligate, so
cultivated a master of nefarious arts. It was
the respect a youngster at school pays to an