“This is lucky, my dear Liancourt. I was just going to your lodgings.”
“And I was coming to yours to know if you dine with Lord Lilburne. He told me he had asked you. I have just left him. And, by the sofa of Mephistopheles, there was the prettiest Margaret you ever beheld.”
“Indeed!—Who?”
“He called her his niece; but I should doubt if he had any relation on this side the Styx so human as a niece.”
“You seem to have no great predilection for our host.”
“My dear Vaudemont, between our blunt, soldierly natures, and those wily, icy, sneering intellects, there is the antipathy of the dog to the cat.”
“Perhaps so on our side, not on his—or why does he invite us?”
“London is empty; there is no one else to ask. We are new faces, new minds to him. We amuse him more than the hackneyed comrades he has worn out. Besides, he plays—and you, too. Fie on you!”
“Liancourt, I had two objects in knowing that man, and I pay to the toll for the bridge. When I cease to want the passage, I shall cease to pay the toll.”
“But the bridge may be a draw-bridge, and the moat is devilish deep below. Without metaphor, that man may ruin you before you know where you are.”