Page:Braddon--The Trail of the Serpent.djvu/173

Rh Richard says, he thinks not.

"Not the Khan!" he mutters thoughtfully. "You really are of opinion that it was not the Khan?"

"I really am," Richard replies.

"Then it lies between the last Duke of Devonshire but sixteen and Abd-el-Kader: I do hope it wasn't Abd-el-Kader; I had a better opinion of Abd-el-Kader—I had indeed."

Richard looks rather puzzled, but says nothing.

"There has evidently," continued his friend, "been some malignant influence at work to prevent your appearing amongst us before this. You have been a member of this society for, let me see, three hundred and sixty-three years—be kind enough to set me right if I make a mis-statement—three hundred and—did I say seventy-twelve years?—and you have never yet joined us! Now, there is something radically wrong here; to use the language of the ancients in their religious festivals, there is 'a screw loose.' You ought to have joined us, you really ought! We are very social; we are positively buoyant; we have a ball every evening. Well, no, perhaps it is not every evening. My ideas as to time, I am told, are vague; but I know it is either every ten years, or every other week. I incline to thinking it must be every other week. On these occasions we dance. Are you a votary of Terp—what-you-may-call-her, the lady who had so many unmarried sisters? Do you incline to the light fantastic?" By way of illustration, the Emperor of the Waterworks executed a caper, which would have done honour to an elderly elephant taking his first lesson in the polka.

There was one advantage in conversing with this gentleman. If his questions were sometimes of rather a difficult and puzzling nature, he never did anything so under-bred as to wait for an answer. It now appeared for the first time to strike him, that perhaps the laws of exclusiveness had in some manner been violated, by a person of his distinction having talked so familiarly to an entire stranger; he therefore suddenly skipped a pace or two backwards, leaving a track of small open graves in the damp gravel made by the impression of his feet, and said, in a tone of voice so dignified as to be almost freezing—

"Pray, to whom have I the honour to make these observations?"

Richard regretted to say he had not a card about him, but added—"You may have heard of the Emperor Napoleon?"

"Buonaparte? Oh, certainly; very frequently, very frequently: and you are that worthy person? Dear me! this is very sad. Not at your charming summer residence at Moscow, or your pleasant winter retreat on the field of Waterloo: this is really distressing, very."