would take leave for the present, but the Colonel evinced no such
intention. On the contrary, settling himself more at ease in his arm-
chair, he said, "if I remember aright, you do not object to the odour of
tobacco?"

Graham rose and presented to his visitor a cigar-box which he took from
the mantelpiece.

The Colonel shook his head, and withdrew from his breast pocket a leather
case, from which he extracted a gigantic regalia; this he lighted from a
gold match-box in the shape of a locket attached to his watch-chain, and
took two or three preliminary puffs, with his head thrown back and his
eyes meditatively intent upon the ceiling.

We know already that strange whim of the Colonel's (than whom, if he so
pleased, no man could speak purer English as spoken by the Britisher) to
assert the dignity of the American citizen by copious use of expressions
and phrases familiar to the lips of the governing class of the great
Republic--delicacies of speech which he would have carefully shunned in
the polite circles of the Fifth Avenue in New York. Now the Colonel was
much too experienced a man of the world not to be aware that the
commission with which his Lizzy had charged him was an exceedingly
delicate one; and it occurred to his mother wit that the best way to
acquit himself of it, so as to avoid the risk of giving or of receiving
serious affront, would be to push that whim of his into more than wonted
exaggeration. Thus he could more decidedly and briefly come to the
point; and should he, in doing so, appear too meddlesome, rather provoke
a laugh than a frown-retiring from the ground with the honours due to a
humorist. Accordingly, in his deepest nasal intonation, and withdrawing
his eyes from the ceiling, he began: