became
disgustingly and I suppose to some minds, fascinatingly, notorious. But
now I was hail-fellow-well-met with him, a bird of his own feather,
a rogue of his own kidney, to whom he threw open the gates of his
bediamonded and befrilled Alsatia. A pestilential fellow! As if I would
mortgage my birthright for such a mess of pottage.

So I stiffened and bade Society high and low go packing. I would
neither seek mine own people, nor allow myself to be sought by Elphin
Montgomery's. I enwrapped myself in a fine garment of defiance. My
sister Jane, who was harder and more worldly-minded than Agatha, would
have had me don a helmet of brass and a breastplate of rhinoceros hide
and force my way through reluctant portals; but Agatha agreed with
me, clinging, however, to the hope that time would not only reconcile
Society to me, but would also reconcile me to Society.

"If the hope comforts you, my dear Agatha," said I, "by all means
cherish it. In the meantime, allow me to observe that the character of
Ishmael is eminently suited to the profession of tax-collecting."

During these early days of my return the one person with whom I had no
argument was Lola. She soothed where others scratched, and stimulated
where others goaded. The intimacy of my convalescence continued. At
first I acquainted her, as far as was reasonably necessary, with my
change of fortune, and accepted her offer to find me less expensive
quarters. The devoted woman personally inspected every flat in London,
with that insistence of which masculine patience is incapable, and
eventually decided on a tiny bachelor suite somewhere in the clouds over
a block of flats in Victoria Street where the service is included in the
rent. Into this I moved with such of my furniture as I withdrew from the
auctioneer's hammer, and there I prepared to stay until necessity should
drive me to the Bloomsbury boarding-house. I thought I would graduate my
descent. Before I moved, however, she came to the Albany for the first
and only time to see the splendour I was about to quit. In a modest way
it was splendour. My chambers were really a large double flat to the
tasteful furnishing of which I had devoted the thought and interest of
many years. She went with me through the rooms. The dining-room was all
Chippendale, each piece a long-coveted and hunted treasure; the library
old oak; the drawing-room a comfortable and cunning medley. There were
bits of old china, pieces of tapestr