And where was Mr. Vanborough all this time? Exactly where we left him
five years since.

He was as rich, or richer, than ever. He was as well-connected as ever.
He was as ambitious as ever. But there it ended. He stood still in the
House; he stood still in society; nobody liked him; he made no friends.
It was all the old story over again, with this difference, that the
soured man was sourer; the gray head, grayer; and the irritable temper
more unendurable than ever. His wife had her rooms in the house and he
had his, and the confidential servants took care that they never met
on the stairs. They had no children. They only saw each other at their
grand dinners and balls. People ate at their table, and danced on their
floor, and compared notes afterward, and said how dull it was. Step by
step the man who had once been Mr. Vanborough's lawyer rose, till the
peerage received him, and he could rise no longer; while Mr. Vanborough,
on the lower round of the ladder, looked up, and noted it, with no more
chance (rich as he was and well-connected as he was) of climbing to the
House of Lords than your chance or mine.

The man's career was ended; and on the day when the nomination of the
new peer was announced, the man ended with it.

He laid the newspaper aside without making any remark, and went out.
His carriage set him down, where the green fields still remain, on the
northwest of London, near the foot-path which leads to Hampstead. He
walked alone to the villa where he had once lived with the woman whom he
had so cruelly wronged. New houses had risen round it, part of the old
garden had been sold and built on. After a moment's hesitation he
went to the gate and rang the bell. He gave the servant his card. The