ber of Lady Kew's house in Queen Street? Her
ladyship had a furnished house for the season. No such noble name to be
found among the inhabitants of Queen Street.

Mr. Hobson was from home; that is, Thomas had orders not to admit
strangers on certain days, or before certain hours; so that Aunt Hobson
saw Clive without being seen by the young man. I cannot say how much he
regretted that mischance. His visits of propriety were thus all paid;
and he went off to dine dutifully with James Binnie, after which meal he
came to a certain rendezvous given to him by some bachelors friends for
the evening.

James Binnie's eyes lightened up with pleasure on beholding his young
Clive; the youth, obedient to his father's injunction, had hastened
to Fitzroy Square immediately after taking possession of his old
lodgings--his, during the time of his absence. The old properties and
carved cabinets, the picture of his father looking melancholy out of
the canvas, greeted Clive strangely on the afternoon of his arrival. No
wonder he was glad to get away from a solitude peopled with a number of
dismal recollections, to the near hospitality of Fitzroy Square and his
guardian and friend there.

James had not improved in health during Clive's ten months' absence. He
had never been able to walk well, or take his accustomed exercise, after
his fall. He was no more used to riding than the late Mr. Gibbon, whose
person James's somewhat resembled, and of whose philosophy our Scottish
friend was an admiring scholar. The Colonel gone, James would have
arguments with Mr. Honeyman over their claret, bring down the famous
XVth and XVIth chapters of the Decline and Fall upon him, and quite get
the better of the clergyman. James, like many other sceptics, was very
obstinate, and for his part believed that almost all parsons had as
much belief as the Roman augurs in their ceremonies. Certainly, poor
Honeyman, in their controversies, gave up one article after another,
flying from James's assault; but the battle over, Charles Honeyman would
pick up these accoutrements which he had flung away in his retreat, wipe
them dry, and put them on again.

Lamed by his fall, and obliged to remain much within doors, where
certain society did not always amuse him, James Binnie sought excitement
in the pleasures of the table, partaking of them the more freely now
that his health could afford them the less. Clive, the sly rogue,
observed a great improvement in the commiss