to behave handsomely to all who give me countenance.
Gentlemen, you shall wait no longer. Although my constitution is
shattered by previous excesses, at the risk of my life I liquidate the
suspensory condition."

With these words he crushed the nine remaining tarts into his mouth, and
swallowed them at a single movement each. Then, turning to the
commissionaires, he gave them a couple of sovereigns.

"I have to thank you," said he, "for your extraordinary patience."

And he dismissed them with a bow apiece. For some seconds he stood
looking at the purse from which he had just paid his assistants, then,
with a laugh, he tossed it into the middle of the street, and signified
his readiness for supper.

In a small French restaurant in Soho, which had enjoyed an exaggerated
reputation for some little while, but had already begun to be forgotten,
and in a private room up two pair of stairs, the three companions made a
very elegant supper, and drank three or four bottles of champagne,
talking the while upon indifferent subjects. The young man was fluent
and gay, but he laughed louder than was natural in a person of polite
breeding; his hands trembled violently, and his voice took sudden and
surprising inflections, which seemed to be independent of his will. The
dessert had been cleared away, and all three had lighted their cigars,
when the Prince addressed him in these words:--

"You will, I am sure, pardon my curiosity. What I have seen of you has
greatly pleased but even more puzzled me. And though I should be loth to
seem indiscreet, I must tell you that my friend and I are persons very
well worthy to be entrusted with a secret. We have many of our own,
which we are continually revealing to improper ears. And if, as I
suppose, your story is a silly one, you need have no delicacy with us,
who are two of the silliest men in England. My name is Godall,
Theophilus Godall; my friend is Major Alfred Hammersmith--or at least,
such is the name by which he chooses to be known. We pass our lives
entirely in the search for extravagant adventures; and there is no
extravagance with which we are not capable of sympathy."

"I like you, Mr. Godall," returned the young man; "you inspire me with a
natural confidence; and I have not the slightest objection to your
friend the Major, whom I take to be a nobleman in masquerade. At least,
I am sure he is no soldier."

The Colonel smiled at this compliment to the perfection of his art; and