is much more than I can understand. That she
should mix herself up with Diana Paget, and play _rouge-et-noir_ at
Foretdechene in a tucked-up chintz gown and a quilted satin petticoat,
in my dreams last night--that I should meet her afterwards in the
little stucco temple on the Belgian hills, and stab her to the heart,
whereon she changed into Charlotte Halliday--is only in the nature of
dreams, and therefore no subject for wonder.

On referring to Sheldon's letter I found that the next people to be
looked up were descendants of Brice the lawyer; so I devoted my
breakfast-hour to the cultivation of an intimacy with the oldest of the
waiters--a very antique specimen of his brotherhood, with a white
stubble upon his chin and a tendency to confusion of mind in the matter
of forks and spoons.

"Do you know, or have you ever known, an attorney of the name of Brice
in this town?" I asked him.

He rubbed the white stubble contemplatively with his hand, and then
gave his poor old head a dejected shake. I felt at once that I should
get very little good out of _him_.

"No," he murmured despondently, "not that I can call to mind."

I should like to know what he _could_ call to mind, piteous old
meanderer!

"And yet you belong to Ullerton, I suppose?"

"Yes; and have belonged to it these seventy-five years, man and boy;"
whereby, no doubt, the dreary confusion of the unhappy being's mind.
Figurez donc, mon cher. Qui-que-ce-soit, fifty-five years or so of
commercial breakfasts and dinners in such a place as Ullerton!
Five-and-fifty years of steaks and chops; five-and-fifty years of ham
and eggs, indifferently buttered toasts, and perennial sixes of
brandy-and-water! After rambling to and fro with spoons and forks, and
while in progress of clearing my table, and dropping the different
items of my breakfast equipage, the poor soddened faded face of this
dreary wanderer became suddenly illumined with a faint glimmer that was
almost the light of reason.

"There were a Brice in Ullerton when I were a lad; I've heard father
tell on him," he murmured slowly.

"An attorney?"

"Yes. He were a rare wild one, he were! It was when the Prince of Wales
were Regent for his poor old mad father, as the saying is, and folks
was wilder like in general in those times, and wore spencers--lawyer
Brice wore a plum-coloured one."

Imagine then again, mon cher, an attorney in a plum-coloured spencer!
Who, in these enlightened days, would trust