some interesting sketches) when the house-porter came up and presented a card.  Lionel glanced at the name—­Mr. Percival Miles—­and wondered who the stranger might be; then he recollected that surely this was the name of a young gentleman who was a devoted admirer of Miss Burgoyne.  Miss Burgoyne had, indeed, on one occasion introduced the young man to him; but he had paid little heed; most likely he regarded him with the sort of half-humorous contempt with which the professional actor is apt to look upon the moon-struck youths who bring bouquets into the stalls and languish about stage-doors.  However, he told the house-porter to ask the gentleman to step up-stairs.

But he was hardly prepared for what followed.  The young gentleman who now came into the room—­he was a pretty boy, of the fair-haired English type, with a little yellow moustache and clear, gray eyes—­seemed almost incapable of speech, and his lips were quite pale.

“In—­in what I have to say to you, Mr. Moore,” he said, in a breathless kind of way, “I hope there will be no need to mention any lady’s name.  But you know whom I mean.  That—­that lady has placed her interests in my hands—­she has appealed to me—­I am here to demand reparation—­in the usual way—­”

“Reparation—­for what?” Lionel asked, staring at the young man as if he were an escaped lunatic.

“Your attentions,” said the hapless boy, striving hard to preserve a calm demeanor, “your attentions are odious and objectionable—­she will not submit to them any longer—­”

“My attentions?” Lionel said.  “If you mean Miss Burgoyne, I never paid her any—­you must be out of your senses!”

“Shuffling will do you no good,” said this fierce warrior, who seemed to be always trying to swallow something—­perhaps his wrath.  “The lady has placed her interests in my hands; I demand the only reparation that is possible between gentlemen.”

“Look here, my young friend,” Lionel said, in a very cool sort of fashion, “do you want to go on the stage?  Is that a specimen of what you can do?  For it isn’t bad, you know—­for burlesque.”

“You won’t fight?” said the young man, getting paler and more breathless than ever.

“No, I will not fight—­about nothing,” Lionel said, with perfect good-humor.  “I am not such an ass.  If Miss Burgoyne is annoyed because I passed her on Friday without recognizing her, that was simply a mistake for which I have already apologized to her.  As for any cock-and-bull story about my having persecuted her with odious attentions, that’s all moonshine; she never put that into your head; that’s your own imagination—­”

“By heavens, you shall fight!” broke in this infuriate young fool, and the next moment he had snatched up the ink-bottle from the table before him and tossed it into his enemy’s face.  That is to say, it did not quite reach its aim; for Lionel had instinctively raised his hand, and the missile fell harmlessly on to the table again—­not altogether harmlessly, either, for in falling the lid had opened and the ink was now flowing over Lady Rosamund’s open album.  At sight of this mishap, Lionel sprang to his feet, his eyes afire.