e for me that I have the privilege to travel on in life so
near to so trustworthy a man. I am thankful for it. Use me as your
right hand, and rely upon me to the death. Don't think the worse of me
if I protest to you that my uppermost feeling at present is a confused,
you may call it an unreasonable, one. I feel far more pity for the lady
and for you, because you did not stand in your supposed relations, than I
can feel for the unknown man (if he ever became a man), because he was
unconsciously displaced. You have done well in sending for Mr. Bintrey.
What I think will be a part of his advice, I know is the whole of mine.
Do not move a step in this serious matter precipitately. The secret must
be kept among us with great strictness, for to part with it lightly would
be to invite fraudulent claims, to encourage a host of knaves, to let
loose a flood of perjury and plotting. I have no more to say now,
Walter, than to remind you that you sold me a share in your business,
expressly to save yourself from more work than your present health is fit
for, and that I bought it expressly to do work, and mean to do it."

With these words, and a parting grip of his partner's shoulder that gave
them the best emphasis they could have had, George Vendale betook himself
presently to the counting-house, and presently afterwards to the address
of M. Jules Obenreizer.

As he turned into Soho Square, and directed his steps towards its north
side, a deepened colour shot across his sun-browned face, which Wilding,
if he had been a better observer, or had been less occupied with his own
trouble, might have noticed when his partner read aloud a certain passage
in their Swiss correspondent's letter, which he had not read so
distinctly as the rest.

A curious colony of mountaineers has long been enclosed within that small
flat London district of Soho. Swiss watchmakers, Swiss silver-chasers,
Swiss jewellers, Swiss importers of Swiss musical boxes and Swiss toys of
various kinds, draw close together there. Swiss professors of music,
painting, and languages; Swiss artificers in steady work; Swiss couriers,
and other Swiss servants chronically out of place; industrious Swiss
laundresses and clear-starchers; mysteriously existing Swiss of both
sexes; Swiss creditable and Swiss discreditable; Swiss to be trusted by
all means, and Swiss to be trusted by no means; these diverse Swiss
particles are attracted to a centre in the district of Soho.