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The woman had left an envelope on the table, he glanced at it.

The Honble: Venetia Birdbrook,

10A Carlton House Terrace,

London, S. W.

Victor read the inscription written in a bold female hand.

It told him where he was, he was in the breakfast-room of 10A Carlton House Terrace, but it told him nothing more.

Was the Honble: Venetia Birdbrook his wife, or at least the wife of his twin image? This thought blinded him for a moment to the fact that a flunkey—they seemed as numerous as flies in May—was at his elbow with a menu, whilst another flunkey, who seemed to have sprung from the floor, was fiddling at the sideboard which contained cold edibles, tongue, ham, chicken and so forth.

“Scrambled eggs,” said he, looking at the card.

“Tea or coffee, my Lord?”

“Coffee.”

He broke a breakfast roll and helped himself mechanically to some butter, which was instantly presented to him by the sideboard fiddler, and he had just taken a mechanical bite of buttered roll, when the door opened and the Archiepiscopal gentleman who had pulled up his window blind that morning entered. Mr. Church, for Jones had already gathered that to be his name, carried a little yellow basket filled with letters in his right hand, and in his left a great sheaf, The Times, Daily Telegraph, Morning Post, Daily Mail, Daily Express, Chronicle, and Daily News. These papers he placed on a side table evidently intended for that purpose. The little letter basket he placed on the table at Jones’ left elbow.