'How does Carnaby take this affair?'

'What affair?'

'Don't you know? Their house has been robbed -- stripped. It's in the
evening papers.'

Rolfe went on into the smoking-room, and read the report of his friend's
misfortune. The Carnabys occupied a house in Hamilton Terrace. During
their absence from home last night, there had been a clean sweep of all
such things of value as could easily be removed. The disappearance of
their housekeeper, and the fact that this woman had contrived the
absence of the servants from nine o'clock till midnight, left no mystery
in the matter. The clubmen talked of it with amusement. Hard lines, to
be sure, for Carnaby, and yet harder for his wife, who had lost no end
of jewellery; but the thing was so neatly and completely done, one must
needs laugh. One or two husbands who enjoyed the luxury of a housekeeper
betrayed their uneasiness. A discussion arose on the characteristics of
housekeepers in general, and spread over the vast subject of domestic
management, not often debated at the Metropolitan Club. In general talk
of this kind Rolfe never took part; smoking his pipe, he listened and
laughed, and was at moments thoughtful. Cecil Morphew, rapidly consuming
cigarettes as he lay back in a soft chair, pointed the moral of the
story in favour of humble domesticity.

In half an hour, his guest having taken leave, Rolfe put on his
overcoat, and stepped out into the cold, clammy November night. He was
overtaken by a fellow Metropolitan -- a grizzled, scraggy-throated,
hollow-eyed man, who laid a tremulous hand upon his arm.