n Cecil Street, and addressed all her
letters to his place of business or his club. He was a man who would
bear no inquiry into himself. If he had been out of view for a month,
and his friends asked him where he had been, he always answered the
question falsely, or left it unanswered. There are many men of whom
everybody knows all about all their belongings;--as to whom everybody
knows where they live, whither they go, what is their means, and how
they spend it. But there are others of whom no man knows anything,
and George Vavasor was such a one. For myself I like the open babbler
the best. Babbling may be a weakness, but to my thinking mystery is a
vice.

Vavasor also maintained another little establishment, down in
Oxfordshire; but the two establishments did not even know of each
other's existence. There was a third, too, very closely hidden from
the world's eye, which shall be nameless; but of the establishment in
Oxfordshire he did sometimes speak, in very humble words, among his
friends. When he found himself among hunting men, he would speak of
his two nags at Roebury, saying that he had never yet been able to
mount a regular hunting stable, and that he supposed he never would;
but that there were at Roebury two indifferent beasts of his if any
one chose to buy them. And men very often did buy Vavasor's horses.
When he was on them they always went well and sold themselves
readily. And though he thus spoke of two, and perhaps did not keep
more during the summer, he always seemed to have horses enough when
he was down in the country. No one even knew George Vavasor not to
hunt because he was short of stuff. And here, at Roebury, he kept
a trusty servant, an ancient groom with two little bushy grey eyes
which looked as though they could see through a stable door. Many
were the long whisperings which George and Bat Smithers carried on
at the stable door, in the very back depth of the yard attached to
the hunting inn at Roebury. Bat regarded his master as a man wholly
devoted to horses, but often wondered why he was not more regular in
his sojournings in Oxfordshire. Of any other portion of his master's
life Bat knew nothing. Bat could give the address of his master's
club in London, but he could give no other address.

But though Vavasor's private lodgings were so very private, he had,
nevertheless, taken some trouble in adorning them. The furniture in
the sitting-room was very neat, and the book-shelves were fille