Holcombe still stood irresolute, his porters eying him from under
their burdens, and the runners from the different hotels plucking at
his sleeve.

"There's some very good people at the Albion," urged the Police
Commissioner, "and three or four of 'em's New-Yorkers. There's the
Morrises and Ropes, the Consul-General, and Lloyd Carroll--"

"Lloyd Carroll!" exclaimed Holcombe.

"Yes," said Meakim, with a smile, "he's here." He looked at Holcombe
curiously for a moment, and then exclaimed, with a laugh of
intelligence, "Why, sure enough, you were Mr. Thatcher's lawyer in
that case, weren't you? It was you got him his divorce?"

Holcombe nodded.

"Carroll was the man that made it possible, wasn't he?"

Holcombe chafed under this catechism. "He was one of a dozen, I
believe," he said; but as he moved away he turned and asked: "And Mrs.
Thatcher. What has become of her?"

The Police Commissioner did not answer at once, but glanced up at
Holcombe from under his half-shut eyes with a look in which there was
a mixture of curiosity and of amusement. "You don't mean to say, Mr.
Holcombe," he began, slowly, with the patronage of the older man and
with a touch of remonstrance in his tone, "that you're _still_
with the husband in that case?"