"Shall you call on Mr. Searle?"

"Heaven forbid!"

"Something has just occurred to me," Simmons pursued with a grin
that made his upper lip look more than ever denuded by the razor
and jerked the ugly ornament of his chin into the air. "There's a
certain Miss Searle, the old man's sister."

"Well?" my gentleman quavered.

"Well, sir!--you talk of moving on. You might move on the
damsel."

Mr. Searle frowned in silence and his companion gave him a tap on
the stomach. "Line those ribs a bit first!" He blushed crimson;
his eyes filled with tears. "You ARE a coarse brute," he said.
The scene quite harrowed me, but I was prevented from seeing it
through by the reappearance of the landlord on behalf of number
12. He represented to me that I ought in justice to him to come
and see how tidy they HAD made it. Half an hour afterwards I was
rattling along in a hansom toward Covent Garden, where I heard
Madame Bosio in The Barber of Seville. On my return from the
opera I went into the coffee-room; it had occurred to me I might
catch there another glimpse of Mr. Searle. I was not
disappointed. I found him seated before the fire with his head
sunk on his breast: he slept, dreaming perhaps of Abijah Simmons.
I watched him for some moments. His closed eyes, in the dim
lamplight, looked even more helpless and resigned, and I seemed
to see the fine grain of his nature in his unconscious mask. They