They went on, until we reached a suburb of new houses, intermingled with wretched patches of waste land, half built over.  Unfinished streets, unfinished crescents, unfinished squares, unfinished shops, unfinished gardens, surrounded us.  At last they stopped at a new square, and rang the bell at one of the newest of the new houses.  The door was opened, and she and her companion disappeared.  The house was partly detached.  It bore no number; but was distinguished as North Villa.  The square—­unfinished like everything else in the neighbourhood—­was called Hollyoake Square.

I noticed nothing else about the place at that time.  Its newness and desolateness of appearance revolted me, just then.  I had satisfied myself about the locality of the house, and I knew that it was her home; for I had approached sufficiently near, when the door was opened, to hear her inquire if anybody had called in her absence.  For the present, this was enough.  My sensations wanted repose; my thoughts wanted collecting.  I left Hollyoake Square at once, and walked into the Regent’s Park, the northern portion of which was close at hand.

Was I in love?—­in love with a girl whom I had accidentally met in an omnibus?  Or, was I merely indulging a momentary caprice—­merely feeling a young man’s hot, hasty admiration for a beautiful face?  These were questions which I could not then decide.  My ideas were in utter confusion, all my thoughts ran astray.  I walked on, dreaming in full day—­I had no distinct impressions, except of the stranger beauty whom I had just seen.  The more I tried to collect myself, to resume the easy, equable feelings with which I had set forth in the morning, the less self-possessed I became.  There are two emergencies in which the wisest man may try to reason himself back from impulse to principle; and try in vain:—­the one when a woman has attracted him for the first time; the other, when, for the first time, also, she has happened to offend him.

I know not how long I had been walking in the park, thus absorbed yet not thinking, when the clock of a neighbouring church struck three, and roused me to the remembrance that I had engaged to ride out with my sister at two o’clock.  It would be nearly half-an-hour more before I could reach home.  Never had any former appointment of mine with Clara been thus forgotten!  Love had not yet turned me selfish, as it turns all men, and even all women, more or less.  I felt both sorrow and shame at the neglect of which I had been guilty; and hastened homeward.

The groom, looking unutterably weary and discontented, was still leading my horse up and down before the house.  My sister’s horse had been sent back to the stables.  I went in; and heard that, after waiting for me an hour, Clara had gone out with some friends, and would not be back before dinner.

No one was in the house but the servants.  The place looked dull, empty, inexpressibly miserable to me; the distant roll of carriages along the surrounding streets had a heavy boding sound; the opening and shutting of doors in the domestic offices below, startled and irritated me; the London air seemed denser to breathe than it had ever seemed before.  I walked up and down one of the rooms, fretful and irresolute.  Once I directed my steps towards my study; but retraced them before I had entered it.  Reading or writing was out of the question at that moment.