On the occasion of his first visit to Mount Street, Sophie Gordeloup was enjoying her retreat in the Isle of Wight. When he called the second time she was in bed, the fatigue of her journey on the previous day—the day on which she had actually risen at seven o’clock in the morning—having oppressed her much. She had returned in the cab alone, and had occupied herself much on the same evening. Now that she was to be parted from her Julie, it was needful that she should be occupied. She wrote a long letter to her brother—much more confidential than her letters to him had lately been—telling him how much she had suffered on his behalf, and describing to him with great energy the perverseness, malignity, and general pigheadedness of her late friend. Then she wrote an anonymous letter to Mrs. Burton, whose name and address she had learned, after having ascertained from Archie the fact of Harry Clavering’s engagement. In this letter she described the wretched wiles by which that horrid woman Lady Ongar was struggling to keep Harry and Miss Burton apart. “It is very bad, but it is true,” said the diligent little woman. “She has been seen in his embrace; I know it.” After that she dressed and went out into society—the society of which she had boasted as being open to her—to the house of some hanger-on of some embassy, and listened, and whispered, and laughed when some old sinner joked with her, and talked poetry to a young man who was foolish and lame, but who had some money, and got a glass of wine and a cake for nothing, and so was very busy; and on her return home calculated that her cab-hire for the evening had been judiciously spent. But her diligence had been so great that when Captain Boodle called the next morning at twelve o’clock she was still in bed. Had she been in dear Paris, or in dearer Vienna, that would have not hindered her from receiving the visit; but in pigheaded London this could not be done; and, therefore, when she had duly scrutinized Captain Boodle’s card, and had learned from the servant that Captain Boodle desired to see herself on very particular business, she made an appointment with him for the following day.
On the following day at the same hour Doodles came and was shown up into her room. He had scrupulously avoided any smartness of apparel, calculating that a Newmarket costume would be, of all dresses, the most efficacious in filling her with an idea of his smartness; whereas Archie had probably injured himself much by his polished leather boots, and general newness of clothing. Doodles, therefore, wore a cutaway coat, a coloured shirt with a fogle round his neck, old brown trousers that fitted very tightly round his legs, and was careful to take no gloves with him. He was a man with a small bullet head, who wore his hair cut very short, and had no other beard than a slight appendage on his lower chin. He certainly did possess a considerable look of smartness, and when he would knit his brows and nod his head, some men were apt to think that it was not easy to get on the soft side of him.
Sophie on this occasion was not arrayed with that becoming negligence which had graced her appearance when Captain Clavering had called. She knew that a visitor was coming, and the questionably white wrapper had been exchanged for an ordinary dress. This was regretted, rather than otherwise, by Captain Boodle, who had received from Archie a description of the lady’s appearance, and who had been anxious to see the Spy in her proper and peculiar habiliments. It must be remembered that Sophie knew nothing of her present visitor, and was altogether unaware that he was in any way connected with Captain Clavering.
“You are Captain Boddle,” she said, looking hard at Doodles, as he bowed to her on entering the room.
“Captain Boodle, ma’am; at your service.”
“Oh, Captain Bood‑dle; it is English name, I suppose?”
“Certainly, ma’am, certainly. Altogether English, I believe. Our Boodles come out of Warwickshire; small property near Leamington—doosed small, I’m sorry to say.”
She looked at him very hard, and was altogether unable to discover what was the nature or probable mode of life of the young man before her. She had lived much in England, and had known Englishmen of many classes, but she could not remember that she had ever become conversant with such a one as he who was now before her. Was he a gentleman, or might he be a housebreaker? “A doosed small property near Leamington,” she said, repeating the words after him. “Oh!”
“But my visit to you, ma’am, has nothing to do with that.”
“Nothing to do with the small property.”
“Nothing in life.”
“Then, Captain Bood‑dle, what may it have to do with?”
Hereupon Doodles took a chair, not having been invited to go through that ceremony. According to the theory created in her mind at the instant, this man was not at all like an English captain. Captain is an unfortunate title, somewhat equivalent to the foreign count—unfortunate in this respect, that it is easily adopted by many whose claims to it are very slight. Archie Clavering, with his polished leather boots, had looked like a captain—had come up to her idea of a captain—but
