"However, what's done is done, and there is no use in crying over spilt milk. You have at least done me a service by your stupidity in following me to-day, for you have shown me the light. Miss Lambert pleases me, and if I choose to make her mistress of my house, instead of my sister, mistress of my house she will be. We will return now to—where I left Miss Lambert, and we will all go home to Gordon Square and have dinner with my sister."
"Not me, Mr James," gasped Bridgewater, "I don't feel well."
"Nonsense! you need not fear my sister. She is no longer mistress of my house; next week she shall pack bag and baggage. Come."
He turned towards the Monkey House, and Bridgewater followed him, so mazed in his intellect that it would be hard to tell whether monkeys, men, Fanny Lambert, Patience Hancock, or elephants, were uppermost in his brain.
CHAPTER VII IN GORDON SQUARE
It was James Hancock's rule that a dinner should be served every night at Gordon Square, to which he could invite any one, even a city alderman.
On this especial day a dinner, even better than usual, was in prospect. Miss Hancock had a large circle of acquaintances of her own; she belonged to several anti-societies. As before hinted, she was not destitute of a certain kindness of heart, and the counterfoils of her cheque book disclosed not inconsiderable sums subscribed to the Society for the Total Abolition of Vivisection and Kindred Bodies.
To-day she expected to dinner a person, a gentleman of the female persuasion—that is to say, a sort of man. Mr Bulders, the person in question, a member of the Anti-Tobacco League, was a crank of the crankiest description. He wrote letters to the paper on every conceivable subject, and in this way had obtained a dim and unholy sort of notoriety. Fox hunting was his especial detestation, and his grand hobby was cremation. "Why Fear the Flames?" by Emanuel Bulders, a pamphlet of fifteen pages, privately printed, reposed in Miss Hancock's private bookcase. But Mr Bulders has no place in this story; he is dead and—cremated, let us hope. I shadow him forth as the reason why Miss Hancock was sitting this evening by the drawing-room fireplace, dressed in the dress she assumed when she expected visitors, and engaged in crochet-work.