CHAPTER III.
LADY MILBOROUGH'S DINNER PARTY.
Louis Trevelyan went down to his club in Pall Mall, the Acrobats, and there heard a rumour that added to his anger against Colonel Osborne.
The Acrobats was a very distinguished club, into which it was now difficult for a young man to find his way, and almost impossible for a man who was no longer young, and therefore known to many.

It had been founded some twenty years since with the idea of promoting muscular exercise and gymnastic amusements; but the promoters had become fat and lethargic, and the Acrobats spent their time mostly in playing whist, and in ordering and eating their dinners.

There were supposed to be, in some out-of-the-way part of the building, certain poles and sticks and parallel bars with which feats of activity might be practised, but no one ever asked for them now-a-days, and a man, when he became an Acrobat, did so with a view either to the whist or the cook, or possibly to the social excellences of the club.

Louis Trevelyan was an Acrobat;--as was also Colonel Osborne.
"So old Rowley is coming home," said one distinguished Acrobat to another in Trevelyan's hearing.
"How the deuce is he managing that?
He was here a year ago ?" "Osborne is getting it done.

He is to come as a witness for this committee.