I did not speak,' stammered Lancelot, abashed
at a pair of eyes which could have looked down the boldest mesmerist
in three seconds.

'I am perfectly well aware that you did not. I must have some talk
with you: I've heard a good deal about you. You wrote those
articles in the --- Review about George Sand, did you not?'

'I did.'

'Well, there was a great deal of noble feeling in them, and a great
deal of abominable nonsense. You seem to be very anxious to reform
society?'

'I am.'

'Don't you think you had better begin by reforming yourself?'

'Really, sir,' answered Lancelot, 'I am too old for that worn-out
quibble. The root of all my sins has been selfishness and sloth.
Am I to cure them by becoming still more selfish and slothful? What
part of myself can I reform except my actions? and the very sin of
my actions has been, as I take it, that I've been doing nothing to
reform others; never fighting against the world, the flesh, and the
devil, as your Prayer-book has it.'

'MY Prayer-book?' answered the stranger, with a quaint smile.

'Upon my word, Lancelot,' interposed the banker, with a frightened
look, 'you must not get into an argument: you must be more
respectful: you don't know to whom you are speaking.'

'And I don't much care,' answered he. 'Life is really too grim
earnest in these days to stand on ceremony. I am sick of blind
leaders of the blind, of respectable preachers to the respectable,
who drawl out second-hand trivialities, which they neither practise
nor wish to see practised. I've had enough all my life of Scribes
and Pharisees in white cravats, laying on man heavy burdens, and
grievous to be borne, and then not touching them themselves with one
of their fingers.'

'Silence, sir!' roared the banker, while the stranger threw himself
into a chair, and burst into a storm of laughter.

'Upon my word, friend Mammon, here's another of Hans Andersen's ugly
ducks!'

'I really do not mean to be rude,' said Lancelot, recollecting
himself, 'but I am nearly desperate. If your heart is in the right
place, you will understand me! if not, the less we talk to each
other the better.'

'Most true,' answered the stranger; 'and I do understand you; and
if, as I hope, we see more of each other henceforth, we will see if
we cannot solve one or two of these problems between us.'

At this moment Lancelot was summoned downstairs, and found, to his
great pleasure, T