he was incapable of earning his daily bread otherwise than by doing the
work of a navvy. Even that he could not do well, society had softened his
muscles and effeminised his constitution. Indeed, he did not know what life
fate had willed him for. He seemed to be out of place everywhere. His best
chance was to try to obtain a clerkship. The editor of _The Cosmopolitan_
might be able to do that for him; if he could not, far better it would be
to leave a world in which he was _out of place_, and through no fault of
his own--that was the hard part of it. Hard part! Nonsense! What does Fate
know of our little rights and wrongs--or care? Her intentions are
inscrutable; she watches us come and go, and gives no sign. Prayers are
vain. The good man is punished, and the wicked is sent on his way
rejoicing.

In such mournful thought, his clothes stained and torn, with all the traces
of a week's toil in the docks upon them, Hubert made his way round St.
Paul's and across Holborn. As he was about to cross into Oxford Street, he
heard some one accost him,--

'Oh, Mr. Price, is that you?' It was Rose. 'Where have you been all this
time?'

She seemed so strange, so small, and so much alone in the great
thoroughfare, that Hubert forgot all his own troubles in a sudden interest
in this little mite. 'Where have you been hiding yourself?... It is lucky I
met you. Don't you know that Ford has decided to revive _Divorce_?'

'You don't mean it!'

'Yes; Ford said that the last acts of _The Gipsy_ were not satisfactorily
worked out, and as there was something wrong with that Hamilton Brown's