you could properly claim the title of esquire, and you would find yourself not further down than the hundred and fiftieth or hundred and sixtieth section in the tables of precedence; but if you went with this qualification to those fine friends of yours, they would admit its validity, and let you know at the same time you were no longer interesting to them.  Harry Thornhill, of the New Theatre, has a free passport everywhere; Mr. Lionel Moore, of the Middle Temple, wouldn’t be wanted anywhere.”

“You are very worldly-wise to-night, Maurice.”

“I don’t want to see you make a sacrifice that wouldn’t bring you what you expect to gain by it,” Mangan said.  “But, as I say, you won’t make any such sacrifice.  You have had your brain turned by a pretty pair of eyes—­perhaps by an elegant figure—­and you have been troubled and dissatisfied and dreaming dreams.”

“If that is your conclusion and summing-up of the whole matter,” Lionel said, with studied indifference, “perhaps you will offer me a drink, and I’ll have a cigarette, and we can talk about something on which we are likely to agree.”

“I’m sure I beg your pardon,” Mangan said, with a laugh; and he went and brought forth what modest stores he had, and he was quite willing that the conversation should flow into another channel.

And little did Lionel know that at this very moment there was something awaiting him at his own rooms that would (far more effectually than any reasoning and plain speaking) banish from his mind, for the moment at least, all those restless aspirations and vague regrets.  When eventually he arrived in Piccadilly and went up-stairs, he was not expecting any letters, this being Sunday; and as there was on the table only a small parcel, he would probably have left that unheeded till the morning (no doubt it was a pair of worked slippers, or a couple of ivory-backed brushes, or something of the kind) but that in passing he happened to glance at the note on the top of it, and he observed that the handwriting was foreign.  He took it up carelessly and opened it; his carelessness soon vanished.  The message was from Mlle. Girond, and it was in French: 

“DEAR MR. MOORE,—­To-day Mrs. Grey and I have called twice at your apartments, but in vain, and now I leave this letter for you.  It is frightful, what has happened.  Nina has gone, no one knows where; we can hear nothing of her.  This morning when I came down to her room she was gone; there was a letter for me, one for Mr. Lehmann, one for Miss Constance, asking her to be ready to sing to-morrow night, another for Mrs. Grey, with money for the apartments until the end of the month, and also there was this little packet for you.  In her letter to me she asks me to see them all delivered.  During the night she must have made these arrangements; in the morning she is gone!  I am in despair; I know not what to do.  Will you have the goodness to come down to-morrow as soon as possible?

“ESTELLE.”