was exorbitant; the landlady, who speedily gauged her lodger’s character, had already made a small competency out of him.  Even during long absences abroad Egremont retained the domicile; at each return he said to himself that he must really find quarters at once more reputable and more homelike, but the thought of removing his books, of dealing with new people, deterred him from the actual step.  In fact, was indifferent as to where or how he lived; all he asked was the possibility of privacy.  The ugliness of his surroundings did not trouble him, for he paid no attention to them.  Some day he would have a beautiful home, but what use in thinking of that till he had someone to share it with him?  This was a mere pied a terre; it housed his body and left his mind free.

The real home which he remembered was a house looking upon Clapham Common.  His father dwelt there for the last fifteen years of his life; his mother died there, shortly after the removal from the small house in Newington where she went to live upon her marriage.  With much tenderness Egremont thought of the clear-headed and warm-hearted man whose life-long toil had made such provision for the son he loved.  Uneducated, homely, narrow enough in much of his thinking, the manufacturer of oil-cloth must have had singular possibilities in his nature to renew himself in a youth so apt for modern culture as Walter was; thinking back in his maturity, the latter remembered many a noteworthy trait in his father, and wished the old man could have lived yet a few more years to see his son’s work really beginning.  And Egremont often felt lonely.  Possibly he had relatives living, but he knew of none; in any case they could not now be of real account to him.  The country of his birth was far behind him; how far, he had recognised since he began his lecturing in Lambeth.  None the less, he at times knew home-sickness:  not seldom there seemed to be a gap between him and the people born to refinement who were his associates, his friends.  That phase of feeling was rather strong in him just now; disguising itself in the form of sundry plausible motives, it had induced him to decline Mrs. Tyrrell’s invitation, and was fostering his temporary distaste for the society in which he had always found much pleasure.  What if in strictness he belonged to neither sphere?  What if his life were to be a struggle between inherited sympathies and the affinities of his intellect?  All the better, perchance, for his prospect of usefulness; he stood as a mediator between two sections of society.  But for his private happiness, how?

He spent this evening very idly, sometimes pacing his large, uncomfortable room, sometimes endeavouring to read one or other of certain volumes new from the circulating library.  Of late he had passed many such evenings, for it was very seldom that any one came to see him, and for the amusements of the town he had no inclination.  He was thinking much of Annabel; he could not imagine her other than calm, intellectual; he could not hear her voice uttering passionate words.  A great change must come over her before her reserved maidenliness could soften to such sweet humility.