"That rests entirely with yourself. As I have said from the first, I did not seek you; you intruded yourself into my circle. I like my present mode of life--for the present--and don't want to change it. Keep clear of me, and we shall never clash. Again, goodbye."

She made a pretty little bow and, undulating all over, left the room as quietly as she had entered it.

When she had closed the door Mitford rose from his chair with a long sigh of relief, loosened his cravat, and shook his fist.

"Yours to-day, my lady--yours to-day; but my chance will come, and when it does, look out for yourself."

[CHAPTER XVII.]

COUNTERCHECK.

Mr. Effingham began to think that the position of affairs was growing serious. A month had elapsed since his interview with old Mr. Lyons at the Net of Lemons, and he had not gained one scrap of information as to the whereabouts of the holder of the forged bill, which was to be held in terrorem over Sir Charles Mitford for money-extracting purposes, and which was finally to be given up for an enormous round sum. Not a single scrap; and worse than all, he had so devoted himself to this one scent, that his other chances of money-getting were falling into disuse. Not that there was much to be done elsewhere; it was the off-racing season, so that his trade of tipster and tout, with occasional sallies into the arena of welching, could not have been turned to very profitable purpose. The Bank authorities had lately been terribly wideawake; several packets of slippery greasy half-crowns, and many rolls of soft sleezy bank-notes, lay hid in their manufacturer's and engraver's workshops, waiting a better time for their circulation. There had been some notable burglaries both in town and country. Gentlemen with blackened faces who wore smock-frocks over their ordinary clothes had done some very creditable work in out-of-the-way mansions and London houses whose owners were entertaining company in the country, and the melting-pots of old Mr. Lyons and others of his fraternity were rarely off the fire. But this branch of trade was entirely out of Mr. Effingham's line. "He's a good 'un at passing a half-bull or at spinning a flash fiver. There's a air about him that goes down uncommon. He's fust-rate for that, is D'Ossay Butler; but as rank a little cur as ever waddled. When he thinks traps is on, he's off; and as to my cracksman's business, or anything where pluck's wanted, Lor' bless you, you might as well have a girl in highstrikes as D'Ossay." That was what his companions said of him, and it was pretty nearly true. Where a little swaggering bantam-cock demeanour was of use, D'Ossay succeeded; but where anything like physical courage or physical force was required, he was no good at all.

When the lion is on short commons, the jackal is generally in a very bad way. If Mr. D'Ossay Butler was hard up, the condition of tall-hatted Mr. Griffiths was necessarily frightful. That worthy member of society was financially at the lowest ebb, and had resorted to a trade which he reserved for the depths of despair, a mild cardsharping--a "three, two, and vun" game, in which it was an impossibility for the bystander to point out the exact position of the king--at low public-houses. During all his wanderings, however, he kept his eyes open to the necessity of obeying his instructions from D'Ossay Butler, to the necessity of discovering the whereabouts of Lizzy Ponsford, the holder of the bill. There was no slum that he visited; no public-house, where he first propitiated the landlord by the purchase of half-a-pint of ale, and then proceeded to suggest to the notice of the two or three sawney-looking men at the bar a "curous little game he had there, at which 'atfuls of money had been von, and which was the favourite recreation of the horficers of the Queen's Life-Guards at the Windsor Barracks, where he'd 'ad the pleasure of introducin' it 'imself;" no pedestrian ground, no penny-gaff, where he did not get into conversation with somebody connected with the premises, and try to worm out that all-important secret. But all was of no avail. Many of the persons he spoke to knew or had heard of Tony Butler, and paid many handsome compliments to the deceased--"a vide-avake vun and no mistake," "a feller as vould take your coat off your back on to his own," &c.; but very few had known Lizzie Ponsford, and those had not seen or heard of her for a considerable time.

So Mr. Griffiths began to keep clear of Mr. Effingham. There was nothing to be got from his employer but abuse, and that was an article of which Mr. Griffiths perhaps had a surfeit, especially after he had picked up a few stray eighteenpences from the frequenters of the Pig and Whistle, at the noble game of the "three, two, and vun." But one night, finding himself in the neighbourhood of the Strand, and having had rather a successful evening,--he had won fifteen shillings from a sailor, at a public-house in Thames Street; a sailor who paid him rigidly, and then cursed him for an adjective swab and kicked him into the street,--Mr. Griffiths thought he would take a little refreshment at Johnson's. On presenting the crown of his hat within the swing-doors, that article was immediately recognized by Mr. Effingham, seated moodily in the nearest box, and its owner hailed in the nearest approach to a voice of thunder which that small gentleman could accomplish.

"Come in; I see you!" called out the little man. "I've been wondering what had become of you all this time. I thought you'd gone to stay with some swell in the country for the hunting-season. I was goin' to ask if they had got your address at the Morning-Post office, that I might write you a line and see if you could find it convenient to lend me a trifle."